There's no Backstage
by RoyalNiffler
Summary: It's five years after graduation, and Finn has traveled to every corner of the earth. Now he's back in the USA to help Kurt, Rachel and Blaine tour their musical across the continent. How will Finn deal with 16 weeks on the road with people he's spent half a decade avoiding? Will this reunion help him reach closure with the tragedy that drove him away all those years ago?
1. Time to Go Home

**Chapter One: Time to Go Home**

For my high school graduation, my favourite teacher, Mr. Schuester, gave me a book titled _1000 Places to see Before You Die_. Three months later, he died.

I knew for a fact that neither he nor the 9 students who died in the same school shooting had seen even a fraction of those 1000 places. It was too late for them.

So I took the money I'd saved up for a baby that had turned out not to be mine, a wedding I had turned out not to have, and a college I had turned out not to get into, and I started trying to make sure that I saw all 1000 of those places before it was too late for me too.

I opened a Youtube channel dedicated to vlogging about my travels. I called my vlog _Peregrination_, which was a word I found in a thesaurus under 'travel'. At first, I only posted the vlogs to make my mother feel better about my absence, but it quickly became an obsession. Vlogging about my experiences allowed me to take extra time to remember and be grateful for every moment.

Some of my nearest and dearest had died before they'd ever had the chance to experience the world, and I was determined to not only experience the world, but to appreciate and understand each experience I had.

I put more work into my vlog than I'd ever put into anything else.

When I crossed the last item out of the book almost five years after my first vlog, _Peregrination_ had one and a half million subscribers, and between that and my accompanying blog, I was regarded as the Messiah of low-budget backpackers across the globe. I was making steady income through my online clothing store and from advertisements on my Youtube channel and my blog. I was constantly being overwhelmed by the loyalty and compassion of my "Peregrinators"-the people who watched my videos every day and formed the only permanent community I'd felt included in since high school.

But after I crossed the last item out of the book, I didn't know what to do or where to go.

My travels and the success of _Peregrination_ had helped me grow up and find peace with the world and my place in it, but once the book was done, it felt like it was time to find something bigger than world tourism to care about.

I'd seen the world and experienced more than I'd ever dreamed, but my stamina for constant travel was wearing thin. I knew it was time to start a different kind journey, but I didn't have a clue what it should be.

I just knew I needed to give my life something more, now that I'd seen all 1000 things and I still wasn't dead.

Then one night when I was sitting on a bunk bed in a hostel in Budapest, waiting for the final vlog in the 1000 places series to upload, I got a Facebook message from my step-brother Kurt, in New York City. He wanted me to help him take his theatre troupe's latest show on tour.

The theatre troupe was called RattleBingBang, and it consisted of Kurt, his boyfriend Blaine, and their friend Rachel. I'd gone to high school with all three of them. They'd been staging original plays in New York City for several years, and they had most of their shows up on Youtube. They were very very good in a darkly quirky, devastatingly honest kind of way that had often glued me to my laptop late into the night feeling feelings I wasn't prepared to feel.

RattleBingBang's latest show was an original musical called _Soundtrack. _They'd received a grant which entitled them to stage it for a single night in each of the forty-two Avonroy Foundation sponsored theatres across North America and the UK. Stage hands, lighting and sound technicians, and front-of-house staff were all covered by the grant, but the rest was up to them. Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine could produce a phenomenal show on a tiny budget, but they didn't have a clue where to start when it came to orchestrating the travel, accommodations, and publicity for such an ambitious touring itinerary.

So Kurt sent me a script and a digital version of the soundtrack to the show, which the three of them had recorded in their apartment. I read the script and listened to the soundtrack and immediately bought my plane ticket back to the United States.

I spent the next month and a half coordinating tour details from Hungary and then Serbia and then Romania. I coordinated with the theatres to organize lighting and sound, worked with events promoters to get press for the show, ordered merchandise, arranged transportation and accommodation, and psyched myself up to come face-to-face with my past.

And then it was time to go home.


	2. This Side of the Disconnect

**Chapter Two: This Side of the Disconnect**

The first thing that Kurt said to me after he buzzed me into his Brooklyn apartment was, "You have to be kidding me with that haircut."

He was taller than I remembered, with an older, more defined and adult face. In high school, Kurt had been baby-faced, effeminate, and so well-dressed that it was hard to take him seriously, but he'd grown into his mannerisms and his fashion sense. He was just as plainly and unapologetically gay as he'd ever been, but for the first time in my life, I looked at my step-brother, and I saw a man.

I grinned, ruffling my hair, and said, "The front counter guy at a hostel in Bucharest cut it for me. Free if I helped him paint the laundry room. Glad you like it."

Kurt rolled his eyes but grinned widely. "Finn Hudson," he said, looking me up and down, "Fuck, it's good to see you again."

I grinned back and said, "You too, little brother. It's been way too long."

I hadn't been good about keeping in touch with my high school friends, but Kurt was my step-brother, so I'd heard a bit about his life from my mom. He'd gotten a job as a stage hand for a Broadway production company when he was eighteen, which had led to an internship with a Tony-award winning theatre designer, which had let to a respectable career as a freelance set and costume designer in New York City.

I grinned back and said, "You too, little brother. It's been way too long."

"And whose fault is that?" Kurt asked.

Shrugging, I said, "You're not chained to New York."

He raised his eyebrows and nodded. "Touché."

I knew that there was unspoken resentment in my family about my prolonged absence, but I wasn't about to apologize for living my life.

Kurt seemed surprised that I let him hug me, but I guess I was a lot more comfortable with people and emotions than I'd been five years earlier. Vlogging daily had forced me to become very unapologetic about who I was. Also, there was something about living in hostels and tour busses for five years that had put personal space into perspective.

I looked around his place, which revealed that Kurt's decorating tastes had evolved since high school but remained extravagant. "Where's Blaine?"

I knew that Kurt and his boyfriend had been living together in New York for years, but I saw no sign of Blaine in the apartment.

Kurt closed his apartment door and dragged me further inside. "Blaine had a doctor's appointment. He'll be back in a half hour to rehearse before the banquet."

"What banquet?"

Kurt smiled. "You do know it was his commencement ceremony this morning, right?"

"Commencement ceremony?"

Rolling his eyes, Kurt said, "Oh my god, Finn. I forgot how oblivious you are. Blaine graduated from Juilliard today."

Sometimes I forgot that while I'd been off exploring everything except my own future, my friends had been honing skills and getting educations and stuff.

"Wow," I said "Juilliard. Good for him."

All I really knew about Blaine Anderson's post-high school life was that he was studying to be a composer, dating Kurt, and liked to write painfully hilarious and profound musicals.

Nodding, Kurt said, "It's a pretty big deal. Plus, a score he composed last winter just got licensed in a new ABC drama, so it's a great week for him."

The last time Blaine and I had had direct interaction, he'd been seventeen years old and had just had a bullet removed from his shoulder. He'd been a quivering, vacant, broken shell of a person. It was relieving to hear how far he'd come since then.

"Wow, that's really cool. And where's Rachel?"

Kurt's expression changed subtly, and I pretended I didn't know what he was thinking. "She had an audition, but she should be home any minute."

"She's doing auditions even though we'll be touring for four months?" It sounded exactly like the Rachel I'd always know. She was nothing if not ambitious.

Kurt said, "They're casting a new musical that doesn't even have a final script yet. It'll be ages before anything happens with it, but they're picking their lead cast now so that they can write to suit the actors."

"This is a Broadway thing?"

Nodding, Kurt said, "Probably. I mean, there're no guarantees, but there's some pretty big names attached to the project already, so it's hopeful. This is about her seventeenth callback, so… yeah."

"Wow. Good for her."

Rachel and I had had an intense off-and-on relationship all through high school. We'd even been engaged for a few months. Our breakup had been emotional and complicated, but I don't think either of us regretted in the long run. Still, things between us had never really felt over. Since she'd started posting RattleBingBang shows to YouTube and I'd been able to watch her perform any time I had an Internet connection, I'd realized how little my feelings towards her had changed. We'd exchanged a few carefully worded emails prior to my arrival in New York, but beyond that, we hadn't talked in years.

Kurt caught my eye and said, "She's excited to see you, Finn."

I nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, same."

I met his eye and added, "Very excited."

He asked, "Things are okay between you, aren't they?"

I gave a little shrug, and said, "Yeah. It's not like either of us would agree to this tour if we weren't ready."

There was a sound at the door, and Rachel herself came through the door. Her hair was longer and shinier than I'd ever seen it before, but she was just as tiny and bursting with physically tangible ambition and talent as I'd always remembered her.

She stared at me with wide, almost-scared eyes for a short but seemingly endless moment, taking a step forward into the apartment. "Hi Finn," she said finally, breathless.

I'd heard her voice on YouTube many times over the last year, but hearing her speak directly to me and in person did weird things to my stomach.

It felt a little bit like the time I met Sean Connery in Paris after growing up watching his movies.

Rachel looked older and better dressed than she had five years earlier, but her voice sounded exactly the same.

And then she hugged me.

I squeezed her tiny body against my towering one, and for a fraction of an instant, New York City and five years of our lives slipped through the cracks until we were standing by our high school lockers again.

And then, back in the Brooklyn apartment, Rachel said, "Oh god, the haircut looks worse in person than it did on your vlog."

Kurt laughed, and I ran my fingers through my hair, grinning sheepishly. "It's just hair," I said.

Rachel laughed. "I'll fix it for you later. Oh my god, Finn. I can't believe you're really here."

I shrugged, holding out my arms to display myself in full. "I'm really here. I've missed you, Rachel."

She put her nose up a little and said, "Of course you have."

I nodded. Kurt said, "And we've all missed you too, Finn. I feel like our entire lives have happened since you've been gone."

"Yep," I agreed.

And as I said it, I think we all silently connected on our mutual understanding of why it felt that way.

We'd all been in glee club together for three years in high school, and those years had been nothing if not significant in our lives, but it was hard to look at them as connected to our lives now. The year after we'd graduated, a horrific school shooting had ended the lives of all but two members of that year's glee club, including the director Mr. Schue and several of our closest friends. That sort of unthinkable tragedy has a way of creating rifts in time and disconnecting parts of your life from other parts.

If it felt like our entire lives had happened since I'd been absent, it was because everything on this side of the disconnect _had_ happened since then. I'd started Peregrination the day after we buried our friends.

I said, "It feels so strange to be back. Everything and nothing has changed."

I think they both knew, just from watching my travel vlogs and hearing what I had to say to my audience about my lifestyle, that I had no regrets and no apologies to make about my prolonged absence from the United States.

Rachel nodded. "Well, I'd ask you to tell us about your adventures, but we watch your vlogs religiously, so I feel almost like I was there with you."

I felt gratified and embarrassed at the same time every time I realized that people who knew me in real life watched the vlogs I made for strangers.

I felt even weirder about the fact that my ex-girlfriend who I'd barely heard from in five years had been watching my life online the whole time.

"Speaking of which," said Kurt, "Have you uploaded a vlog yet today? When are you going to announce the tour?"

I grinned. "The vlog is up. I didn't tell them where I was going, but I hinted that it was something cool."

Rachel said, "Well, when are you going to tell them?"

I said, "I'll tweet a hint right now. Here. I'll take a picture of the three of us. Come in close."

Rachel and Kurt smiled widely and crowded in on either side of me. I took a picture of all of us and tweeted, _"Reunited with some old friends in NYC. That's right; I'm back in America. HUGE news coming in tomorrow's vlog. Hint: rattlebingbang"_

"Once Blaine gets here, we can film a real announcement with all of us. I'll introduce all of you and talk about RattleBingBang and Soundtrack."

Exchanging a grin with Kurt, Rachel said, "Way cool. I've got friends who won't believe I actually know you. They're gunna flip out when they see me on your vlog."

I was surprised and embarrassed. "You know people who know who I am?"

It was easy to forget, when I was constantly on the move and often in remote parts of the world, how many people actually knew my name. How many people actually sat at their computers every day, watching me explore the globe.

Rolling her eyes, Rachel said, "Are you kidding me? Half the people I know are trying to get YouTube famous. They all know your name."

I grinned. "Way cool.

Kurt said, "It has been pretty cool, what you've done with YouTube, you know."

"It is," said Rachel, "And we will have to talk about that later. What I don't get is why you haven't announced the tour yet! We need more exposure for our show if we're going to sell tickets." She had adopted the same bossy, know-it-all tone that she always got when she thought people weren't pulling their weight, and it would have pissed me off if I hadn't missed it so much.

I shook my head. "You'll have an audience even without my vlog. This show is fantastic."

Rolling her eyes, Rachel said, "Of course it's fantastic, but that doesn't mean anyone is going to go see it. We're nobodies."

"No, you're not," I said, "Or at least, Blaine's not. You guys know what a big deal that grant Blaine won is. You're getting tons of free press just from that. Plus, I've got promoters in every city pushing your show."

Kurt raised an eyebrow. I said, "But don't worry. I'll push it on my channel too. That's what I'm here for, right?"

Rachel nodded unabashedly, and Kurt nodded slightly abashedly.

The door opened again, and Blaine Anderson came through the door. His hair was styled differently than he'd styled it in high school, and he was dressed in what I assumed was the same suit that he'd worn to his commencement ceremony that morning. He looked like he could be walking down a red carpet for the Oscars or something.

I tried not to let the old jealousy creep back up.

"Hey! Finn! You're here!" He bounded forward for a big hug, which I returned easily. I'd forgotten about Blaine's unending energy because it had been so absent the last time I'd seen him, but his it warmed my heart to realize that it had probably long since returned. And it was just as infectious as it had ever been.

"Hey Blaine! Lookin' good, man! Congratulations! Big day for you, huh?"

He beamed and said, "Yeah. Big day. And a big one for you too! Back in the States at last. How does it feel?"

"Weird," I say, "Very weird. But it was bound to happen someday."

He said, "I'm just glad it was us who made it happen."

Nodding, Rachel said, "I'm pretty sure we deserve an award for luring you home."

I shrugged. "Congrats. You got me here. Now you have to use me. Let's film an announcement for my vlog."

Blaine grinned, looking down at his suit. "Should I change?"

I surveyed him and shook my head. "Nah. You look classy. It'll add some comedy."

Kurt said, "I _still_ don't get why you had to wait until you were here to announce this to your vlog."

Shaking his head, Blaine said, "No, I get it. The element of surprise is what makes the vlogs work. It's better to show them things as they happen than to give them any time to judge and form opinions about them before they happen."

I nodded. "Exactly. My audience is very resistant to change. They'll all freak out about me having a commitment outside of vlogging unless I can prove as it's happening that it's not going to stop the vlogs."

Kurt nodded. "Fair enough. I just hope that it's not too late to get people to come to our shows."

"It's not," Blaine said, "Come on. You watch his vlogs. All he does sometimes is tweet a meet-up point, and within two hours there are dozens of people there. People will come. I'm sure of it."

I gave Blaine a grateful smile. It was nice to know that he at least understood what I did. I'd been nervous about coming back and sharing this weird new world with my old friends, so it was a relief to see how understanding they all already were.

"Exactly," I said, "I think you have nothing to worry about. People will come to your shows. Our real challenge here will be to build you a loyal fanbase of your own. You guys need to reach out to the audience and get them to care about _you_, so that your company can thrive. So that being said… everyone sit on the couch."

Rachel ran the bathroom to check her hair and makeup, and then the three of them sat on the couch. I turned on my camera, pointed it to my face, and said, "Okay guys. It's time for some big news. By now I think you all know that I'm in New York City... what you don't know is that I'm here for a reason that is very special to me. With Peregrination over, it's time for me to start a new chapter of my life. So… I'm here with some of my oldest friends." I turned the camera to the three of them on the couch.

"These three are all brilliant on levels I could never hope to achieve. They have their own theatre troupe called RattleBingBang; I'll annotate a link to their channel on the screen. They've been writing, producing, and staging original plays here in New York City for a few years now, and they are all _insanely_ gifted."

My friends all grinned with varying levels of humility.

I said, "Their latest show is called _Soundtrack_, and it's going on tour across 42 cities. They've asked me to be their tour manager, and I have agreed."

I paused, turning the camera back onto my own face.

"This is an exciting new adventure that I'll talk to you more about later, but don't worry; the vlogs will keep coming. So… without further ado, I'm going to let them tell you about themselves and about their show."

I turned the camera toward my friends. They all exchanged glances, and Blaine took the lead. "Okay, so, the three of us started RattleBingBang three years ago. We've done mostly one-act plays and cabaret type of things in New York up until now; mostly in student theatre festivals and stuff like that. We have video of some of our other shows up on our YouTube channel."

He had an easy, natural way of talking to the camera, which shouldn't have surprised me since Blaine had an easy, natural way of talking to everyone. Most people were awkward and tentative about talking to a camera, but Blaine dived right in with no hesitation. I was quickly being forced to let go of the broken, traumatized image I'd had of Blaine since I'd seen him last in Ohio. Before the shooting, his charming and self-assured manner had driven me crazy with jealousy and mistrust, but now I just respected the fact that he'd been able to hold onto it after everything that happened.

Blaine continued, "Like Finn said, we're about to take a show on tour. The show is a full, two-act musical called _Soundtrack_. It's set in a world where everyone's life is a musical. The story is about the musicians who have been cursed to a lifetime of providing the soundtracks to other people's lives. I can't say too much more about the story without spoiling it, but we're all very proud of this show."

I turned the camera back to myself and added, "As they should be. It's perfect, you guys. It's everything a musical should be."

I panned back to Blaine, who beamed at me and added, "It would mean the world to us if you guys would come see our show. And yes, we are exploiting Finn and his channel to get more exposure. If we admit that right off the bat, can we avoid hateful comments?"

I laughed and said earnestly, "I want them to exploit me, guys. Nobody is more deserving. If we're coming to your city and you have any interest in theatre, please see the show. I haven't even seen it yet, but I've read the script and heard the music, and it absolutely changed my life."

Blaine said, "And plus, Finn doesn't know this yet, but he's part of the cast. So at the very least, you can come to stare at him."

"Wait, what?" I asked, "_What?_"

Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine all burst out laughing. "Don't worry," said Rachel, "We'll rehearse right after this. You'll be great."

I showed the camera my terrified expression. "Yikes. So you can come to see me make a fool of myself. And of course, we'll all be selling merch after the show, so you can meet us then. You don't even have to buy anything."

I panned back to Blaine and said, "Now tell them about yourself, Blaine Anderson."

Blaine straightened his spine a little, and smoothed his tie, grinning at the camera with purposefully over-the-top charisma. "I'm Blaine Anderson." He said, "I wrote and composed the show, and I play the role of Isaac."

"You have to give them more than that, Blaine," I said, "Go on."

He shrugged. "I'm twenty-two years old, and I met Finn in… high school. I moved to New York four years ago to study at the Juilliard School… and today, I officially graduated with my Bachelor of Music in composition."

Kurt, Rachel, and I all clapped and cheered. He grinned appreciatively, unapologetic about his pride. "So yeah. That's pretty exciting. I don't really know what else to say, except that I'm incredibly humbled and grateful that _Soundtrack_ has been chosen for the Avonroy series, and that Finn has been kind enough to help us with the huge undertaking that a tour like this is for a theatre troupe as tiny and low-budget as ours."

Kurt and Rachel nodded. Blaine nudged Kurt to introduce himself. Kurt said. "Uh. Okay. So I'm Kurt, and I play Simon in the show. I also made the sets and costumes. Uh… I've known Finn since elementary school, and his mom married my dad about six years ago, so we're actually step-brothers. I uh… let's see. I work in theatre design, and I… I'm twenty-three years old." He was much less comfortable than the camera than Blaine had been. I didn't blame him. It does feel kind of stupid to talk to a camera as if it cared.

He turned to Rachel, and she immediately got that look I always remembered her getting whenever attention was turned to her. Rachel, of course, would never see that camera as anything less than a future audience, and she would never be anything less than thrilled to talk about herself to it.

She said, "Hi everyone. I'm Rachel Berry. I will be playing the part of Rita in _Soundtrack_. I graduated from the New York Academy of Performing Arts last spring with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in vocal performance. I… am twenty-three years old… a vegan… a Sagittarius… an attention whore… and I also met Finn during high school."

She beamed at the camera, and I tried not to grin like too much of an idiot. She was much less grating than she once was, but she was still unapologetically eager to impress, and I still loved her for it.

I turned back to the camera. "So there you have it!" I said, "The four of us will be travelling together for the next sixteen weeks, so you'll get to know them all a lot better. I've made arrangements in every city to have my traditional gatherings, so if you can't get tickets to the show, or you're not interested in the show, I'd still love to meet you all at those. I'll be tweeting more info about the gatherings as we go along. Check the description below for more details about when we'll be in a city near you!"

I turned off the camera. "Okay," I said, "So that's done. Now uh… what is this about me being in the show?"


	3. Shit's Getting Real

**Chapter Three: Shit's Getting Real**

Blaine grinned. "Don't worry, you don't have any lines. We just need a drummer. We've reworked the script a little so it would be sort of a running joke that you don't actually do anything except play drums. Like you're exactly what the rest of the characters don't want to become."

I was a pretty good drummer, but the idea of performing with people as talented as these three in a show with so much potential was very intimidating. "Oi," I said, "Are you sure? You're not just doing this for an excuse to put me in the show because you think that more people will come see it that way, are you?"

Rachel shook her head and said, "No, seriously Finn: this really improves the show. We can rehearse it right now, and if you don't think you can pull it off, we'll just use pre-recorded drums."

I shrugged. "Okay. So let's rehearse."

Blaine led us to a rehearsal space in what should have been the apartment's dining area. I sat down at the drums.

"All you really have to do is sit there," said Blaine, "And play drums during the songs. You've heard the soundtrack, right?"

I nodded. I'd been listening to it on repeat for weeks. "Yeah, of course. Let's just go through the songs, and you can tell me if my drumming is up to snuff."

Blaine picked up a guitar. "Alright. Cool. We'll start at _Backstage_."

Kurt took his position behind a piano, and Rachel stood at a microphone stand. "One, two three four…"

The music filled the apartment, and I filled it out with drum rhythms. Blaine stopped me frequently to correct my beats, but I got the hang of it quickly. We played through the entire score of _Soundtrack, _until Blaine finally deemed me performance ready.

I had to admit that the idea of a silent drummer improved a show that was already flawless.

Also, hearing all of them play and sing those songs live sent actual shivers down my spine. The last time I'd played music with them, it was 2012 and we were on a stage winning the national show choir championships.

"Oh my god," I said, "I'm gunna cry. This show is going to be unbelievable."

"So you'll do it?" asked Blaine eagerly, "The drum part?"

I nodded. "Absolutely."

Blaine and Kurt high fived.

I laughed. "Oh my god. I just got really really excited. People are going to fucking adore this show."

"Of course they are," said Kurt, "But in the meantime… I have to get dressed for the banquet."

Rolling his eyes, Blaine said, "Hurry, Kurt. We have to leave in like ten minutes."

And then, the second Kurt disappeared into his bedroom, Blaine and Rachel crowded in together. "Did you get it?" hissed Rachel excitedly.

Blaine nodded quickly, reaching into his pocket. "I absolutely got it."

And he brought a tiny velvet box out of his pocket. I let out an audible yelp. "Oh my god," I said, stepping closer. "Is that what I think it is?"

Blaine smiled widely at me and nodded, glancing up to make sure Kurt still in his room. He opened the box to show us a ring; it was wide and gold with a winding line of tiny diamonds circling the whole thing. It was elegant and masculine and flashy and perfect for Kurt.

"Holy fuck," I said, "That's an engagement ring."

"Yep," said Blaine proudly, "It sure is."

"Does he know about this?" I asked.

Rachel hissed, "Of course he doesn't know! Why do you think we're whispering?"

I said, "I mean… you've talked about marriage, I assume?"

I was of the firm opinion that romantic surprise proposals were incredibly stupid if both parties didn't already have an understanding about what marriage meant to them.

I'd made that mistake with Rachel half a decade earlier.

Nodding, Blaine said, "Yeah. We always said we'd wait until I was done my undergrad. And… well…"

"When are you going to propose?" I asked, heart racing.

Kurt and Blaine's love story was kind of a fairy tale. For two gay boys in our hometown to find each other was unlikely; for them and find the courage to be together was admirable. The fact that they were totally perfect for each other too was a miracle. Their relationship had survived some dark and difficult times, and they'd come out stronger than ever. I sometimes felt like everyone who knew them was rooting for them to be together forever.

And that ring in Blaine's hand meant that they were one step closer.

Blaine said, "I'm doing it tonight. But don't worry… if he says no, I won't bail on the tour."

"He's _not_ going to say no," Rachel assured Blaine.

"No," Blaine agreed, "I really don't think he will."

"Holy shit," I said, "Graduating Juilliard… getting engaged… wow."

In my opinion, Blaine deserved more than anyone in the world to have stuff to celebrate. He'd been in the choir room that day five years ago when ten people got killed. He'd been shot in the shoulder himself. He'd performed CPR and tried to stop bleeding. He'd watched his friends be put into body bags. And then he'd had to stay at that high school for eight months, tortured by the empty choir room and the stares of his classmates until the day he graduated.

I couldn't think about what he went through and not feel sick.

So yeah, Blaine deserved the best from the world, and I knew for a fact that Kurt was the best.

Blaine straightened his tie. "Shit's getting real, right?"

Rachel gave him a big hug. I joined in.

Kurt came back out of his room, and said, "Woah woah. Group hug without me?"

He obliviously joined in.

And then Kurt, all dressed up to compliment his boyfriend's attire, took Blaine's hand in his, and the two of them left the apartment.


	4. Way Too Much

**Chapter Four: Way Too Much**

All of a sudden, Rachel and I were alone together for the first time since we'd broken up half a decade earlier.

She went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She motioned for me to sit down on the couch. I did so, and she joined me, pouring us both wine.

She said, "Kurt's got a ring for Blaine too, you know."

"Hmm?" I asked. All I could think about was the wine glass hovering near her lips.

She took a sip and said, "They're both planning to propose tonight. I can barely contain myself. It's about time, isn't it?"

I blinked, feeling a bit bewildered by the mere thought. "I guess they've been dating for… what, six years? Seven?"

Rachel said, "Something like that."

I nodded. "Blaine seems to be doing well," I said, "I expected him to be different. But he's just as charming and enthusiastic as before… what happened."

She paused, seeming to consider her words carefully. ""Blaine is… Blaine," Rachel said, shrugging, "And I know it must be exhaustingly hard to be Blaine, but he's too… _Blaine_ to give up, so he keeps being Blaine." She grinned and laughed at her own convoluted explanation of her friend.

I nodded. "I'd sort of forgotten. Blaine. All these years, I haven't been able to forget the image of him being led out of the school that day, screaming and covered in blood…"

I watched her face carefully, unsure if talking about the shooting was taboo or not. She gave no indication.

I said, "I think I'd deconstructed the guy I actually knew and rebuilt him in my head as someone completely different. Someone broken. It's a bit jarring to see him again in person and realize that he's just the same as he was before it all. Still confident, well-spoken, and utterly self-possessed."

I hadn't expected it to be so easy to talk openly with Rachel, but the words come out of my mouth before I even think about it. I don't know if I have depleted my emotional barriers after years of vlogging, or if Rachel and I just have the kind of relationship that will never require reservation.

Rachel laughed. "He and Tina both say that everyone expects them to be more fucked up than they are."

I said, "I guess it's just a reflection of how out of touch I've been. He's really okay though?"

Shrugging, Rachel said, "He tries harder than anyone should have to to stay positive and stay productive, but he pulls it off day after day. That's all I can really say."

I nodded, sensing a respectful protectiveness towards Blaine that I'd once thought she reserved only for her idols in show business.

I said, "He's always been very private. I remember. All that charisma and talent... he had a way of getting people to like and admire him without ever really knowing him."

She said, "I know. Everyone loves Blaine, but very few people actually know him. And he likes it that way. It's infuriating sometimes."

Grinning, I said, "That's just a guy thing. We love to be admired and hate to be pitied."

Rachel said, "Well, I'm just glad that Blaine has Kurt to keep him in reality."

"Anyone with Kurt in their life is lucky," I said.

"You don't need to tell me that," she agreed.

"_He_'s grown up a lot. I mean… Kurt's a man now. I hadn't expected him to be the one to change, but of all of you, I recognise him the least."

Nodding, Rachel said, "Success makes you grow up fast."

I said, "So he's kind of a big deal in theatre design, huh?"

"For his age, absolutely," said Rachel, "Kurt got to Broadway before any of us, even if it isn't in the way he thought it would happen."

I said, "Yeah. Crazy."

Rachel nodded. "And now he and Blaine are getting engaged. Aren't you just so excited for them?"

I was a little stunned by the mere idea, honestly. "I dunno," I said, "To me, they're both still seventeen-year-old kids. I guess I've been gone too long. I can't get over how grown up you all seem."

She gave me a wry smile. "Yeah. I guess we forget that while we're watching your life on the Internet every day, you really have no idea we're up to back here."

"I haven't been good about staying in touch. I know that."

She sipped her wine again and said, "You say you know it, but you don't say that you're sorry."

I caught her eye. She held her wine and I couldn't tell what she was thinking. "No," I said, "I don't have a lot of regrets. Although sometimes I wonder if I should."

"Don't," she told me, "I have a lot of respect for what you've done with your life. No regrets is a good way to live."

Nodding, I said, "I think so. I know that I'm happy, anyway. I do wonder about you and me sometimes, though."

She sighed, staring into my face. She said, "I wonder too. But I don't think either of us would be nearly as well-adjusted and happy as we are today if we'd tried to pretend that we could still be friends. I think it's good that we made a clean break."

"Yeah," I said, "Yeah, the clean break did us both a world of good." I took a long drink from my wine.

Rachel said, "It did. And yet…"

I watched her closely. She didn't finish her sentence, but even after half a decade of separation, I knew those eyes well enough to extrapolate.

She gave me an almost permissive nod, and I set down my wine very quickly. "Rachel…"

Her lips were on mine before I could figure out what I wanted to say.

We abandoned our barely touched wine and disappeared into her bedroom.

Somehow two hours of intensely physical intimacy, including four orgasms and a shared shower, seemed to clarify all of the confused, barely acknowledged feelings we still had for each other more than years of reflection ever did.

By the time we returned to our wine, we were both exhausted, red-cheeked, and oddly giggly.

"Yeah, we're both definitely grown up," I said, laughing.

Nodding, Rachel said, "Which is what we needed I guess. We had to grow up. You and I both know that we didn't break up because we didn't love each other."

"No," I said, feeling oddly drunk even though I'd had only a few swallows of wine. "No, we always loved each other. We probably loved each other too much."

"Way too much," Rachel nodded.

I said, "And at the time, I didn't even understand why we had to break up. I just knew that we couldn't stay together."

"It was so confusing," Rachel agreed. "I knew it was over and I knew it was for the best… but I didn't know why."

I nodded, tipping more wine into my mouth.

Rachel asked, "Do you think you understand it now?"

She was watching me intensely, and I knew from her unconcealed anticipation that she'd put just as much thought into the answer to that question as I had.

I nodded. "Yeah. I get it. We were too young and too different and too fucked up from… what happened to… to Artie and Sam and Brittany and Sugar and Mr. Schue and everyone…"

I felt a cold wave wash over me as I spoke aloud the names of our lost friends for the first time since they'd died.

Rachel's eyes pierced mine with understanding and pleaded me to go on.

I said, "I mean, we were just too fucked up to be able to sustain a relationship as high-maintenance as ours was."

Rachel sort of smiled, nodding. "Yeah. Too young and confused and scared to deal with the way our feelings for each other complicated everything."

I nodded. It felt unexpectedly cathartic to finally acknowledge these things face-to-face. "There was just… this _feeling_, you know… this _drive_, after the shooting. It just felt so important to really _live_ and _experience_ and _grow_… and somehow that meant you and I had to part ways."

She drained her wine glass and told me, "It's because that drive you mentioned… it was pulling us in opposite directions, and staying together meant putting the brakes on all of the things that that tragedy made it seem so imperative that we do. Splitting up was the only way either of us could have come to terms with what happened."

Rachel never used to talk like that. She never used to be so thoughtful. She never used to be capable of sidetracking her ambition long enough to really think through the emotional and difficult stuff. She never used to able to stop practicing or strategizing long enough to deal with anything real. I didn't know if it was the tragedy or growing up or both that had changed her.

"I'm glad you see it that way too," I said.

She nodded. "Funny how it pushed us apart, and it brought Kurt and Blaine closer together."

I asked, "Do you think they're engaged yet?"

Rachel nodded. "I'm sure of it. But neither of them will be able to take their eyes off of each other for long enough to inform anyone until they get home."

"I'm so glad that I'm here today. Finally, I'll be around for an important milestone in someone I care about's life."

Rolling her eyes, Rachel said, "You've already said you don't regret being gone."

"Just because I don't regret my choices doesn't mean that they haven't been hard choices."

"Fair enough," she said.


	5. A Little Left Out

**Chapter Five: A Little Left Out**

As if knowing that Rachel and I couldn't stand to wait any longer, Kurt and Blaine came through the door, both wearing rings and huge smiles.

I tried not to let on how hard I was finding it not to cry as we all hugged and congratulated and poured more wine.

I hadn't expected to still feel so connected to these people after all those years. I hadn't expected returning to bring up so many old feelings.

It felt like I was finally giving in to a craving I didn't know I had. Like a warm, relieving wave of comfort that relaxed parts of me that might have forgotten that they could relax.

And as Kurt and Blaine showed off their rings and asked Rachel to be a bridesmaid, I wondered for the first time ever if maybe living commitment-free for so long might have been a mistake.

I had been building a life out of a thousand disconnected parts while my friends back home had been building seamless and solid lives with relationships and dreams. They had roots and they had concrete roles and identities. I'd never envied that for a second until I returned and realized that for five years, their relationships with each other had been steadily strengthening while their relationships with me had been steadily withering.

I guess I just felt a little left out.

As Rachel, Kurt and Blaine giddily recounted the proposal planning processes that both guys had included Rachel in, I slipped into Rachel's bedroom to film a conclusion to the day's vlog in private.

"Alright guys," I said, "My Twitter has been going crazy ever since I posted that picture announcing I was in New York. I never realized how many of you lived here. I'm so sorry, but I won't be able to do a meetup here until we're back in August. But don't worry, it's all planned. August seventeenth. Central Park. I'll tweet more about it closer to the date. In the meantime… we're leaving for Boston in the morning. We'll do a meetup there on Monday at one o'clock, at Boston Common. I'll tweet my exact location when I get there."

I paused, scrolling through my Twitter relies on my phone. "Some of you have already guessed that I'm touring with RattleBingBang, even though as of now I haven't made any official announcements beyond tweeting a link to their YouTube page. Very clever."

I read further through my replies, and said, "Let's have a chat, then. I've been getting a lot of concerned tweets. A lot of you think that me being back in the States is a bad omen. And yes, I know that this tour is a bit of a departure from my usual lifestyle. But you have to understand that I already accomplished the goal that Peregrination first intended to do. A lot of you are so resistant to change. You want me to keep doing what I've been doing for the rest of my life. But that's not going to happen."

Yawning, I added, "My next project also involves travel, but I can't promise that I'll be travelling forever, and I want to be honest about that right now. My lifestyle is going to change and evolve, and someday, that might mean settling down. All I can promise is that I'm not going to close the door on YouTube and sever this connection I have with all of you until nobody is interested anymore. But I'm moving forward, as everyone does."

I said, "I think that the time has come for me to start using all of the things I've learned from five years of going places and meeting people for a greater purpose than continuing to go places and meet people. I don't know what that means yet, but that's life."

I waited a few moments, thinking, and then I added, "These next few months are going to be a change, and I know that it probably isn't going to be easy, but at this moment, I honestly believe that this is what I need to do. I need to reconnect with my friends, and they need someone with travel experience to help them pull off the grueling tour itinerary that they are locked into."

I grinned and added, "Believe me, _Soundtrack_ is worth seeing. My friends are all very talented and highly trained artists. Sometimes I feel guilty that so many people know my name, while my much more talented friends remain so anonymous. It means everything to me that I have the means to help them, so I hope that those of you who have the means and the interest will come out to see their show."

I shook my head. "I know that I'm being all rambling again, but it's been a very long day for me. I've been awake for thirty-six hours. Being back in the States with my friends has definitely been… emotional. So I'm sorry that the vlog is a bit short today, and it's mostly just been talking. Tomorrow will be our first day on the road, so I'm sure I'll find tons of stuff to vlog about. Until then… goodnight everyone."

I turned off my camera and went back out to the kitchen to find my backpack with my laptop so that I could start exporting my footage. I'd edit and upload in the morning.

Blaine and Kurt were Skyping with my mom and Kurt's dad, announcing their engagement, when I joined them in the living room again, and Rachel was waiting for me with a pair of scissors.

"I'm fixing your hair," she said, "Sit down."

I raised my eyebrows. "Can't I say hi to my mom?" I glance pointedly over to where the boys are sitting with their laptop.

She shook her head. "Let Kurt and Blaine have their special moment. Don't steal their thunder. Haircut."

So I let Rachel fix my Romanian haircut, and somehow we ended up making out in the kitchen for ten minutes until we both remembered that Kurt and Blaine were in the next room talking to my parents.

Giggling, Rachel whispered, "What are we doing, Finn? Are we just fooling around or do you want to do this for real?"

I said, "It has to be for real. Right?"

She nodded. "That's what I want. But do we tell Kurt and Blaine?"

"They'll figure it out," I said, "But maybe we try to keep it to ourselves as long as we can? So that there's less pressure."

Looking relieved, Rachel said, "Perfect. Good. This stays between us."


	6. Draw Those Lines

**Chapter Six: Draw Those Lines**

I was still on Romanian time, which meant that I fell asleep early and was up again at the crack of dawn. I sat in my friends' kitchen editing and uploading the previous day's vlog while I waited for them to get up.

After a long night's sleep, what had happened between Rachel and me the night before was starting to seem crazy and surreal, but I focused on replying to tweets and Youtube comments and emails from the theatre in Boston instead of dwelling on my potential relationship drama.

Kurt and Blaine emerged from their room shirtless with their arms around each other and disappeared into the bathroom without even noticing me sitting at the table watching them. I tried not to try to identify the sounds I heard down the hall as they showered, presumably together.

"Morning, Finn," mumbled Blaine once they emerged. He sat down at the kitchen table and put his head on the table. His hair was still wet and curly from the shower and he didn't look at all like he wanted to be awake.

"Rough night?" I asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing at Kurt.

Kurt shook his head. "He's just not a morning person."

Blaine didn't take his head up off the table until Kurt passed him a banana. Then he lifted his head just high enough to nibble on the banana while Kurt cooked oatmeal and brewed coffee.

"I've been up since four," I said, "Jet lag."

Blaine shuddered, and Kurt said, "Ouch. But I guess you probably had work to do, huh?"

Nodding, I said, "Our promoter in Boston emailed me sometime last night to let me know that there's going to be a ton of reviewers in the audience tonight. We're the last Avonroy grant show to premiere, so I guess a lot of publications are getting pretty antsy to profile the series. I hope you're ready!"

Blaine seemed to brighten ever so slightly at this news, but his bleary eyes still didn't seem to be focusing on anything.

Rachel emerged from her room fully dolled up as Kurt finished cooking the oatmeal. He portioned it into three bowls and poured us all coffee. He passed Blaine some coffee and the rest of us oatmeal and coffee. Rachel brought rice milk and some sugar to the table, and Blaine poured it into his coffee, still not speaking.

Adding rice milk and sugar to her oatmeal, Rachel said, "I just checked my email, and RattleBingBang's Youtube channel has gotten a hundred thousand hits since Finn tweeted that link last night. We've got thirty thousand new comments and ten thousand new subscribers."

Kurt's jaw dropped a little, and Blaine finally seemed to wake up a little. "_What_?" Kurt gasped, "Ten _thousand_ subscribers? Just from a tweet?"

Even I was impressed by the swiftness of my followers. "And my vlog for yesterday should go live any second now, so you're about to get thousands more. I hope you're ready."

Blaine started scrolling through his iPhone for proof, and I said, "Speaking of which, I should vlog our parting feast."

I took out my camera while Kurt went to the fridge for (much to my relief) the real milk. "Good morning everyone," I said filming the whole room, "We're up early and enjoying breakfast. We've got to be on the road in about an hour to get to Boston in time. _Soundtrack_ premiers tonight. How excited are we?"

Rachel waved to get me to film her, and she said, "I'm unbelievably excited, and unbelievably blown away by all the support we are already getting from you guys. Can't wait to hit the road."

Kurt nodded. "I'm already getting jittery. Months of hard work are coming to fruition tonight. I hope we see some of you there!"

"And what does the mastermind behind the show have to say on this momentous morning?" I asked, panning toward Blaine.

Blaine looked up from his phone and gave my camera a forbidding look. His eyes flicked immediately back down to his phone.

"Don't talk to him!" Rachel said sharply, pulling my arm to get the camera off of Blaine. "Rule number one of Blaine Anderson: don't talk to him in the morning before he's had at least two cups of coffee."

Kurt nodded. "Memorize that rule if you want to survive more than a day with him in an RV."

I glanced at Blaine, whose face was blank and dozy as though he had no idea we were talking about him.

I told my vlog, "Alright. See? We're already learning things about each other."

I ate my oatmeal and drank my coffee, and then Rachel started bossing us all around.

"We need to get that RV packed and we need to get out of here. Now. Blaine: chug the coffee. Let's move."

I'd been living out of a backpack for five years, so I'd forgotten how time consuming packing could be for normal people. It took half an hour of gathering and last minute shoving stuff into bags before we were ready to take the first armful of stuff down the RV, which I'd parked on the street across from their apartment.

And then they started exploring the RV.

I vlogged the exploration as it happened. The RV had a couch behind the driver's cab that would be where I slept at night. In the loft right above the cab was a double bed, which Rachel claimed. There was a kitchenette with a microwave, fridge, and a stove across from the couch, and a closet-sized bathroom with a tiny sink, toilet, and shower at the end of the couch. Another double bed across the back end of the RV would belong to Kurt and Blaine.

There were storage compartments underneath and on top, plus a trailer towing behind, so with effort, we managed to fit all of their luggage, sets, costumes, instruments, and sound equipment in.

"It's really not nearly as bad as I thought it would be," said Blaine, "I didn't realize we were getting a trailer too. There's plenty of space."

I nodded, but both Kurt and Rachel looked dubious.

"What about sex?" asked Kurt bluntly.

Rachel, Blaine, and I all blushed and turned to him in surprise.

"Oh come on," said Kurt, "Blaine and I just got engaged. Finn and Rachel are long-lost lovers. Don't try to tell me none of you have wondered about it. We should set ground rules."

The four of us were standing in the tiny RV that we were about to spend the next four months in, and my step-brother was talking about sex. I wondered momentarily how my life had come to this.

I said, "You'll just have to get used to doing it quietly or adjust to the idea that we're going to know what you're doing."

Rachel looked incredibly uncomfortable by the conversation, and Blaine's expression had changed so little that I knew he was silently begging for the topic to change. I tried not to burst out laughing.

And Kurt was way too unapologetically Kurt to give a shit. He said, "Okay. Just as long as we're all agreed that it's okay."

Rachel and Blaine nodded quickly, and I said, "We'll just go with the flow. I've got headphones if you guys get too freaky."

Blaine interjected, "And we'll get hotels sometimes too, right?"

I said, "We get to stay in hotels if we sell enough merchandise."

"What counts as enough?"

I said, "Well, right now we're breaking even on the tour, provided that gas prices don't skyrocket, the RV doesn't break down, and we stick to our food budget."

"So any profits from merch go to hotels?"

Rachel was much much much too high maintenance for four months in an RV, and we all knew it.

I said, "Well, no, because first we need to make back the money we spent on the merch in the first place."

"What? We paid for the merch in full, didn't we?" Rachel asked, "So it's not like we're in debt or anything. Any cash we make is ours."

Sometimes it boggled my mind how these people could be so talented and so yet bad at math. I said, "Theoretically, yes, but we need to make back the investment first, so that we can reinvest it."

"In what?" asked Kurt.

"In more merch," Blaine told him, nodding at me.

"Right," I said, "We've got to have cash in case we need to order more merch partway through the tour."

Blaine asked, "Well, we'll be getting more money from ticket sales, right? Can't we use that?"

"The Avonroy Foundation will pay you any profits at the end of the tour. At that point it's a little too late for hotels. Once we start earning from merch, you can decide to spend that money however you want."

"Ugh. Okay." Blaine shrugged. "I guess you're the boss."

I sensed a tiny amount of resentment in his tone. Granted, it was his ideas and his music that made the tour possible in the first place, but I refused to apologize for working my ass off to help spread his brilliance around the country. Around the world, really.

I said, "I'm not saying that you can't get a hotel with your own money if you can afford it. I'm just saying that RattleBingBang-the touring budget-can't afford it until we sell half the merch. Do you know how hard it was to even get an RV on that budget? The only reason we can afford this one is because the rental company gave me a discount if I promote them on my vlog."

Blaine nodded, giving me a small sort of smile that I don't really understand, and I wondered if I misinterpreted his resentment.

Rachel said, "Okay. Well, I invested every penny I had in the touring budget, so I guess it's the RV until we sell some merch."

Kurt said, "Not a problem. I designed kick-ass merch. We'll have hotels within a month."

"That's the spirit," I said. Blaine kissed him.

I'd been sleeping in dorms, tents, and stranger's couches for five years, so the RV itself seemed like an insane luxury while a hotel was almost incomprehensible, but I admired their ambition.

"Do you have an actual copy of the budget somewhere?" Blaine asked, "I'd like to see it."

I nodded. "I'll bring it up on my laptop when I get the chance. But trust me; it all balances out, and as long as we stick to it, we should be quite comfortable on this tour."

I really actually didn't think that any of them were at all cut out for living on the road for four months, but I knew that they were all self-important enough and perseverant enough to pretend they were coping with it anyway.

Rachel said, "Cool. Well, I dibs driving first."

The guys and I exchanged glances. "Are you kidding?" I asked, "You want to drive a twenty-four foot motorhome with a six-foot trailer through Manhattan?"

She put her hands on her hips haughtily. "What, so because I'm a girl, I can't drive?"

"Well…" Kurt raised his eyebrows, "I mean, it's not so much that you're a girl as that you're a tiny theatre nerd who has never even owned a vehicle."

Putting her nose in the air, Rachel said, "That means nothing. I know this city better than all of you, and I took a driver's ed class for this tour. I bet I could outdrive all of you."

"You took a class?" Blaine stared at her.

She rolled her eyes. "Of course I did. Finn said we'd all be expected to take our turns driving. I never go into anything unprepared. Now give me the keys, Finn, and I'll get this show on the road."

Kurt, Blaine and I found places to sit as Rachel got behind the wheel and started the engine. We watched apprehensively as she pulled out onto the street and started driving. Rachel was about five-foot-two and barely weighed a hundred pounds, but she drove like a pro, and I thought it was sexy as fuck.

Once they started feeling safe with Rachel's driving, Kurt and Blaine started exploring the RV more extensively.

"Oh cool," said Kurt, opening the fridge, "You already got groceries."

I nodded. "Yeah. I got pretty excited when I picked up the RV. Even though it won't be stationary, this thing is the most permanent residence I've had in years. I nested a bit, I guess. I got groceries and I even bought myself my own blankets."

Kurt and Blaine laughed.

"Wow, I never really thought about that," Blaine said, looking at me in a new way, "This place is a luxury for you, huh? I guess this whole tour is. What's the longest you've stayed in the same bed for since you left?"

"Well," I said, "I had the same tent and sleeping bag for about ten months while I was in Africa."

Kurt said, "That doesn't count. What's the longest you stayed in a place you couldn't carry on your back?"

Shrugging, I said, "Hard to keep track. I'd have to consult the vlogs. But it's pretty rare for me to stay in the same place for more than a week. I was in that village in Belize for like twelve days when I had that weird virus last summer, I guess."

"Twelve days." Kurt shook his head. "Fuck. I honestly don't know how you do it." He looked through the cupboard by the fridge, examining my choice of groceries.

"Of course," I said, "Another reason for the grocery shopping was excitement over being back in an American grocery store."

Kurt slid a jar of peanut butter out of the cupboard and held it up, giving Blaine a very pointed look. Blaine rolled his eyes, and Kurt gave him an even sharper look.

"What?" I asked, watching their silent argument.

Blaine made an expression of surrender at Kurt and said, "Uh… let's just say that peanuts are to me what video was to the radio star."

I heard Rachel giggle from the driver's seat, and Blaine gave me an apologetic grimace as Kurt nodded in annoyed agreement.

It took me a moment to figure out what Blaine meant, and then I grimaced. "Oh. As in… they'll kill you. Right. You're allergic."

I had a vague memory of Blaine blushing through an explanation of how to save his life with an EpiPen back in high school.

Blaine nodded, and Kurt said, "I'm throwing this out."

I didn't want make anyone sick, but I'd practically lived on peanut butter and jelly for years. I was seriously annoyed as the jar hit the bottom of the garbage bin.

"Well don't waste it!" I said, stepping forward to pick it out of the trash. "It's sealed. It won't hurt anyone. I'll keep it for after the tour."

"Thank you," said Blaine sheepishly.

I took a seat on the couch while Kurt and Blaine started finding homes for all of their belongings. I scrolled through the comments on the video I'd uploaded before breakfast and couldn't stop grinning at my audience's reaction to my latest video. With very few exceptions, my audience was very excited to see me exploring new avenues and reconnecting with the past that I'd always been deliberately vague about with them.

And, as expected, everyone already had opinions about my friends.

"Everyone wants to know if you're single, Blaine," I said, laughing.

Blaine grinned with a casual shrug and said "Let them wonder."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Why is everyone always in love with _my _boyfriend?"

"Fiancé," Blaine corrected him, putting his hand on Kurt's waist and kissing him playfully, "And it doesn't matter, because I'm in love with you."

From the driver's seat, Rachel asked, "Nobody's asking about me?"

Kurt and Blaine were reading comments now too. "They all think you're a diva," Kurt told Rachel with a congratulatory tone. "But hot."

The Rachel I'd loved years earlier would have been defensive about a diva accusation, but she'd clearly long since embraced it. "I _was_ pretty eager in that announcement video." She shrugged. "The ones who count will see me perform and know it's justified."

Blaine and Kurt groaned but gave her proud grins, and I just laughed.

The thing about Rachel was that she would be intolerable if it weren't for the fact that all of her self-importance wasn't entirely backed up by talent you couldn't help but root for and cry about.

Blaine said, "Well, at any rate, tons of people say they're getting tickets. This is cool. I've gotten six hundred new Twitter followers in the last two hours."

"Yeah," I said, "Well, now would be a good time to think real carefully about how much of yourself you're willing to give, because my audience wants it all. And they will pry. That's just the nature of the Internet."

Kurt said, "Yeah, I know. I've seen the Tumblr blogs dedicated to you. It's a little… intense."

"Yeah?" I asked, "Well. I've been warned by other vloggers not to go on Tumblr, so I never have. I really only ever read stuff that people comment directly on my videos or tweet directly at me. I can't even keep up. But I do know that there are some groups of Peregrinators out there who are extremely dedicated and kind of fierce about it."

"Why do you think they get so protective of you?" Blaine asked, "There are people out there-I've looked at stuff-who are like… scary obsessed with you. On like... crazed teenage fangirl levels."

Blaine had so much talent and so much passion for other people's talents that I think it must have been infuriating to see a talentless buffoon like me have so many dedicated fans.

I said, "Because I interact with them. I mean, I show them my life, and I talk to them about my decisions and ideas… there are a lot of lonely people out there who don't get that kind of intimacy anywhere else. They know more about my life and my thoughts than anyone else'."

Kurt said, "It is pretty addicting. Even _I _feel like I know you better than I know a lot of people who I actually talk to every day."

"And sometimes I do wonder if maybe it's a little unhealthy," I admitted, "Because obviously I can't know them or listen to them even a fraction of the amount that they know and listen to me."

Rachel spoke up, "But you actively encourage a lifestyle that doesn't include sitting in front of a computer all day idolizing a stranger. And from what I've seen, the majority of your fans understand that, and they try their best to live that lifestyle. I wouldn't call that unhealthy."

"Some of them _do_ just sit there loving him and not following his advice though," said Blaine fairly.

"Sure," said Kurt, "But that's not Finn's fault. And I think that the most die-hard of his fans are die-hard the way they are because the philosophies that Finn lives by resonate with them. And for the most part, those are positive, productive philosophies."

I ignored his 'for the most part' clause, and silently thanked Rachel and Kurt for sticking up for my choices.

"So they love you because you share with them," said Blaine, "But we all know that there are some things that you _don't_ share."

I said, "Exactly. Which is why I'm telling you-decide how much you want to share now. Draw those lines. And then we'll all stay within them."

Blaine said, "And I suppose you need us to stay within _your_ lines too?"

Blaine was always so composed and deliberate with what he said that I could never guess what he really meant by anything. I couldn't tell if he resented my lines or respected them.

"I don't want people knowing where I'm from or the details of my personal relationships, but that's pretty much all I keep private."

Rachel asked, "But why?" asked Rachel, "Why keep where we're from a secret? Surely knowing where you came from would give a better context to your life now?"

I said, "Because where we're from is attached to a lot of stories that aren't mine to tell. It's more than my own privacy that I'm protecting."

All three of them are silent for a moment, knowing immediately which stories I mean. Blaine gave me a look I could definitively identify as respect. I felt a little nauseous, but I pushed it back and said, "And I keep my relationships private because that's between me and those I care about. The whole world doesn't get to judge and probe into that. It's not fair to anyone."

Rachel and I exchanged extremely brief glances, and Kurt said, "Good for you. Those are good lines to draw. I'm happy to stay within them."

Blaine and Rachel nodded.

I asked, "And what about you, Kurt and Blaine? Do you want to announce your engagement? Or should that stay between us?"

Kurt glanced at Blaine, who seemed to trust his fiancé to speak for both of them. Kurt said, "We don't really care if people know, but we think it would be fun to just never address it. Keep people guessing, you know? It could be funny. For us, if nobody else."

I grinned. "There are only three beds in the RV, and I guarantee you that my viewers are going to notice that. They're immediately going to start trying to figure out which of us are sleeping together."

Blaine laughed quietly, and Kurt laughed outright. "Perfect," said Kurt, "We'll leave it open for interpretation."

Laughing, Rachel said, "You guys are cruel. This'll be fun."


	7. Form a Line

**Chapter Seven: Form a Line**

We spent most of the rest of the drive to Boston reading and responding to tweets and comments, and talking through our itinerary for the rest of the week. It was strange how quickly I could fall back into an easy and natural relationship with these people who I hadn't seen in so many years. For brief moments, it felt like old times, but those moments vanished quickly when they reminded me how infinitely over those old times really were.

We pulled up beside the theatre in Boston three hours before our show, and the four of us sat in the RV just sort of staring at each other and psyching ourselves up before we got out.

"Finn!" The first thing I saw when I stepped down from the RV was a group of six or seven twenty-somethings standing by the stage doors, wearing Peregrination merch and bouncing with excitement to see me appear.

"Oh wow, hi guys!" I said, stepping forward and shaking hands and giving hugs. "Nice to meet you."

Kurt, Blaine, and Rachel stood by awkwardly as I asked them all their names and found out where they were from.

"I can't believe you're here!" Marnie said, "I've had tickets to the Avonroy series for months, and _Soundtrack_ was the one I was most excited to see. Now that I know you're involved, I'm even more excited."

I motioned for my friends to step forward. "Well, don't be excited about me. These are the masterminds behind it. It's a great show."

I glanced at them and said, "I'm gunna go into the theatre and figure out what we're doing. Do you guys want to hang out with our new friends?"

Rachel grinned widely, and I left them with my fans as I went into the theatre, stomach fluttering.

I'd spent months faking my way through coordinating with the theatres, and now it was time to see if I'd been successful.

I found the office I'd been directed to check in at without much difficulty. "Can I help you?" asked the man behind the desk.

"Yes," I said, "I'm Finn Hudson, with _Soundtrack?_ We've just pulled up."

The man looked up sharply and got to his feet immediately. "Finn Hudson! Fantastic. I'm Steve Buford. It's great to meet you. You look just like you do in your vlogs. Wow."

He shook my hand eagerly, and I tried not to be embarrassed. "We've been selling _Soundtrack_ tickets like crazy all morning," said Steve, "I don't think there are many seats left. This show is getting buzz."

"Fantastic," I said, grinning proudly, "Blaine will be glad to hear it."

Steve nodded. "I can't wait to see it."

"Awesome," I said, "So… you got our sound and lighting rider, right?"

"Of course," Steve said, "Everything's ready for you; I'll show you to the stage and introduce you to our sound and lighting guys, and then you can load in."

"Right," I said, "Perfect. Cool. So what's the deal? Can we start loading in now or what?"

Steve said, "Yeah, absolutely. Get set up, and then we'll do a sound check and walk through the lighting. I'll let the guys know you're here."

"Awesome," I said.

Steve showed me backstage, gave me keys to our dressing room, and introduced me to the house lighting and sound techs. By the time I finally went back outside to get the others to help start loading stuff in, the three of them were engaged in a very earnest conversation with the _Peregrination_ fans about something that dissolved as soon as I returned.

"Alright," I said, "Let's do this."

It was a long and exhausting process to set up the stage, but the three of them had organized themselves and all of their sets, props, and equipment so well that it was pretty straightforward. My main contribution was moving heavy things and staying out of the way. Kurt was the professional at this; before he'd been able to start designing full-time, he'd worked as all varieties of production assistant and stage hand on and off Broadway.

"Show's sold out," a tech told me as we set up a merchandise table in the lobby, "Set looks incredible. Good luck."

He walked away, and Blaine jumped about a foot into the air. _"Yes!"_ he said, "Sold out. _Fuck _yeah. Sold out premier. Yes."

Kurt kissed him, and Rachel and I high-fived.

We went to our dressing room to scarf down dinner, shower, and get into our costumes. "I should go out there and talk to people," I said, once the theatre began filling up.

"Don't," Blaine told me, "You'll start a riot."

I laughed. "I'll be back in fifteen minutes."

"No," Kurt said seriously, "Don't. If you go out there, everyone is going to come over and try to talk to you. It'll be a mess. Just wait until after the show when we're selling merch. They can form a line."

I grimaced. "Form a line? That sounds so…" I shuddered. "I think you're overestimating how many people out there give a shit who I am."

Rachel laughed. "And I think you're underestimating it. Finn, people have been here waiting for you for four hours. We were talking to those people outside when we first got here; did you know that they actually have a _Peregrination_ society here in Boston? They run a cooperative hostel and local touring service, and they use the proceeds to send their members on adventures all around the world. And it's all inspired by you."

I grinned. "Oh really?" I asked, "I didn't know that there was one of those in Boston. I need talk to them about that. I want to start a worldwide collective."

"A worldwide collective?" Blaine raised his eyebrows dubiously.

I shrugged. "Yeah. I'll send you the link to the blog post I made about it a few years ago. There are a handful of Peregrinators doing it around the world. Some just out of their homes and stuff. They have a forum online. Hopefully someday I'll have the resources to really try to get something official going."

Blaine's eyebrows were still raised. I couldn't tell if he thought this was a crazy idea, or if the idea impressed him. I turned away from him so I wouldn't have to try to figure it out.

"Wow, yeah, send me that link too," Kurt said, "I had no idea that sort of thing existed until we talked to those people earlier."

Rachel nodded. "I still don't think you should go out there until after the show, Finn. You're having a meet-up tomorrow anyway. We can't cause chaos before the show even starts. It'll just confuse the people out there who have no idea who you are."

I was so pleased to find out that there was a _Peregrination_ society in Boston that I didn't even argue.


	8. Any Artist's Goal

**Chapter Eight: Any Artist's Goal**

_Soundtrack_ was a masterpiece, which I'd known since the moment I first read the script, and actually seeing it performed was something I'd looked forward to for weeks. I had a feeling that this was the kind of show that could really mean a lot to a lot of people, and I couldn't wait to see it happen.

I knew how important it would be to Kurt and Blaine and Rachel if they could construct an atmosphere of storytelling in that theatre that would make people feel things on a level intense enough for them to keep feeling that way once the curtain was closed. Isn't that any artist's goal? To create something with the power to stretch outside of itself and genuinely affect the consciousness of other people?

I wanted to be awed by my friends' performing talent and chilled by the powerful story that Blaine had written. But as the show went on, I found myself repeatedly being too overwhelmed by emotions unrelated to what was happening on stage to really connect with the actual show.

_Soundtrack _opened with a solo by Rachel. The song was beautiful and the story it introduced was intriguing, but the way her voice resonated through the theatre made me feel exactly like it used to make me feel in high school, and it was surprisingly painful.

For five years, I'd been apart from everything that reminded me of the shooting and the friends that I lost, but as soon as I got up on that stage, the memories that had been dulled by distance for so long were suddenly very sharp.

There's a very unique and intense kind of connection that comes from sharing songs and sharing a stage. I'd become very aware of that in high school, when I'd become immersed in the impossibly tight-knit glee club. We may have had nothing in common with each other, but as soon as we began to create music together and work towards common goals, we were a community that probably saved a lot of us from going down some dark roads.

The last time I'd been on a stage with Rachel, it had been with that glee club. As _Soundtrack _opened with her solo, I could actually hear the voices of our old choir backing her up. But in reality, five of those voices had been silenced forever. It surprised me how vivid and painful that reminder was.

For most of the show, it was all I could do to keep up with my drum parts and keep my memories and strangely vivid flashbacks from overwhelming me.

Still, the energy I felt from the crowd when we took our final bows was so intense that the tears on my cheeks when the curtain closed were tears of pride in my friends and nothing else.

Backstage, I immediately turned on my camera and went to Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine, who were all bouncing with the adrenaline of performance. "So… we just finished the first show… how do you think it went?"

Rachel, Kurt, and Blaine all started talking at once.

"We kind of screwed up the second scene, but I think that's just because we'd never rehearsed it with the drum set in the way."

"Rachel fucking _nailed_ the finale though. Superstar, right here."

"And that scene after the intermission was golden. It finally went the way we want it to."

"Plus, I think we made Finn, cry, so overall, we'll call is a success."

I turned the camera onto my face and nodded, showing the tears in my eyes. I said, "And listen; the crowd is still clapping. They loved it. We'd better get out there and meet people."

I turned off the camera.

"Hang on," said Blaine, "Hang on. I'm shaking all over. Give me a moment."

I looked at him and saw how flushed and wild-eyed he looked. Kurt's grin softened with endeared affection toward his fiancé. He stepped closer and put both hands on Blaine's shoulders, whispering something that made Blaine's eyes snap closed.

I was feeling way too emotional for comfort too, but there was something a little bit off about how Blaine seemed, and it made me nervous.

I looked at Rachel, who caught my gaze. As Kurt and Blaine backed up into a corner to whisper about something, she told me quietly, "It's all the adrenaline. Blaine gets kind of crazy when he gets too excited. He just needs to calm down."

I raised my eyebrows. She said, "The way he explains it is that his body doesn't know the difference between fear and excitement, so it just keep producing adrenaline and makes him panic when he shouldn't."

I felt a weird, heavy feeling in my stomach, watching Blaine and hearing this. "He hasn't always been like that though, huh?"

She blinked and a sadness crossed her face. "No," she said quietly, "It's a PTSD thing. But he's very good at staying rational about it. He'll be fine. This is just a huge moment for him. He's been working on _Soundtrack_ for three years."

My stomach twisted a little, but I only said, "Well, he should be very proud. It's an _incredible_ show."

She beamed. "I know. Blaine's a genius. I mean, he'll tell you _Soundtrack _is a collaboration, but really this is Blaine's baby. Kurt and I just helped him bring it to life."

After a few moments, Blaine calmed down, laughed at himself, and led us to the merchandise table in the lobby.

A line was already forming, and everyone standing there started applauding when they saw us approach. Rachel took a bow, and Blaine greeted everyone loudly while Kurt unlocked the cash box, and I stood back quietly, letting them take the praises and congratulations from the crowd.

When the theatre manager, Steve, came to congratulate us, he told us that this was the first time they'd ever hosted an Avonroy grant-winning production that actually made more money on ticket sales than it cost them to stage the show. The theatre had 800 seats, and all of them had been filled that night. For the first ever public performance of a musical from an unknown, non-local composer produced by a tiny, unheard of indie theatre troupe, filling 800 seats is a pretty big deal.

"Well," Blaine said, "We have Finn to thank for that. I doubt half the people here would have come if it weren't for him."

"Nothing wrong with that," Steve said, "You've got to catch their interest somehow. Luckily you've got a show good enough to hold their interest once it's caught. Congratulations. If you don't get any better offers, I'm sure our company would consider producing a longer run of the show here in Boston sometime. Finn knows how to get ahold of me."

I was very proud of my friends, and I was frankly a little annoyed at myself for getting too caught up in my own emotional baggage to actually enjoy the show on the same level as everyone else seemed to have.

A few people who came through the line got very emotional about meeting me and insisted on photographs and autographs and hugs. I obliged happily because I'd never been anything but stunned and grateful that I actually had fans, but claiming more attention than the people who just performed a phenomenal show made me feel weird and guilty.

"Don't even worry about it," said Kurt when I mentioned this to him, "I was expecting it to be worse. You don't have to apologize for your success. We're all grownups."

But I knew Rachel well enough to know that she probably didn't feel the same way, so I did my best to divert the attention back onto the real cast and tell my fans that I hoped to see them at the meet-up the next day.

"I mean, don't get me wrong," Blaine said later, as we were taking down the set and packing our equipment back into the RV, "The show still needs work. But for the first staging, that was awesome. I know that the thrill of performance maybe gave me a heightened impression of how awesome it was, but I still think it was awesome. I'm sure the reviews will say we're trying too hard though. But that was awesome. And all of those people seemed so affected by it. Didn't you think so? We sold tons of merch. And plus, it was sold out, so hopefully they'll say good stuff about it online and we'll sell out in other cities. And I talked to a couple of reviewers too…"

He spoke in a stream of manic excitement which Rachel and Kurt seemed to find endearing. Nobody interrupted him; we just let him keep chattering until everything was packed up. Rachel and Kurt couldn't stop grinning and nodding at him as he spoke.

I couldn't imagine what hard emotional work must have gone into developing a creative project as superb as _Soundtrack_, and I was proud of them all for getting it onto a stage, but I'll admit that I was a little wary of the excitement I felt from all of them. I had enough experience with success to know how intoxicating it could be at first, and how exhausting it could be on repetition. We still had four months of travelling and performing to go, and too much self-congratulation at the very beginning could lead to some serious disappointment and burnout later on.

So I watched their excitement with caution, but I was pleased by their joy.


	9. Crying's Good Too

**Chapter Nine: Crying's Good Too**

We parked the RV for the night in a campsite by the bay, and the jet lag caught up to me the moment I sat down on the couch. I fell asleep mid-conversation with Kurt, and when I woke up again, the sun was coming up, and everyone else was fast asleep too.

I thought for a moment about rolling over and falling back asleep, but I couldn't contain my hunger to see what people were saying about the _Soundtrack _premier. I reached for my phone and started browsing.

The reviews from Boston newspapers were all positive. One called it the best show in this year's Avonroy grant series, which was a pretty big deal considering that there were thirteen other shows in the series, most of which were by much bigger and more experienced productions companies. Someone else called the show elegant and clever and gave it five stars. Someone wrote that it was a "good show to see if you want to know what happens when you erase the distinction between emotions and just feel life for what it is," which I thought was an apt if slightly heightened way of describing it.

I had tons of tweets congratulating me on the show and telling me that it was brilliant or that my friends were insanely talented, which lifted part of a strange, guilty weight off of my shoulders that I didn't understand.

I very very rarely ventured into online communities of Peregrination fans; this was mostly because I didn't think it was a good use of my limited time. I wasn't going to waste my life reading what other people were saying about my life. I also always found it very bizarre and uncomfortable to read things that people I'd never met were saying about me. Direct comments and tweets were one thing, but what the fans said to each other in forums they didn't think I'd see were quite another.

It's not that my fans were crazy; on a prideful and self-important level, I understood why they were enamored by me and my lifestyle. It's not even that my fans were mean; some of them were extremely defensive and quick to judge, but for the most part they were intelligent and kind people who only wanted to join me on my mission of experiencing life to its fullest. A lot of the activity on fan forums and blogs had nothing to do with me; it was just people discussing their own Peregrination journeys with each other.

But then again, there was also a lot of activity on the forums and blogs that was intensely focused on me. There's just something extremely disconcerting about having gifs and fanfics and elaborate role-plays being constantly created based on your life. It was flattering, sure, and I was glad that the creators had found a creative outlet they were passionate about, but I just couldn't get used to the idea that that outlet could be me.

All I did was talk to a camera about my very honest and very universal thoughts and ideas.

But that morning while I waited for my friends to wake up, I went snooping in the fan communities to see if anyone was talking about _Soundtrack_. And I was extremely proud of what I found. People were talking about it, and they loved it. They were gushing about it and urging other people to go see it. Not only that, but they'd been watching old shows on the RattleBingBang channel, and they were quickly declaring themselves superfans of my friends' work. They were sifting through my friends' old tweets and YouTube videos, trying to assemble a clear portrait of the people they had become enamoured with overnight. People were stunned by the talent of my friends, and I was stunned by their support and kindness. And a little big stunned by their diligent obsession.

I knew that most people who saw _Soundtrack_ in Boston hadn't stayed up all night scouring the Internet and starting fan blogs, Twitter accounts and street teams for my friends. Most people had just gone home and moved on with their lives. It's a very specific breed of person who dedicates much time to online fandom. These are the self-titled "fangirls," and those sorts of people like to latch on to new obsessions. Maybe they latched onto _Soundtrack _because it was worthy of their obsession, or maybe they did because they needed to find community, and building a network of fans online was the way they knew how to find it. Maybe it was a bit of both.

At any rate, people were saying good things about the show, and I hoped that the world would take these good things seriously. I felt like RattleBingBang could turn into a legitimate artistic career for my friends if we could pull this tour off properly.

But keeping up with my own career as a vlogger at the same time as coordinating this tour meant I had work to do, so I rolled out of bed and went to my laptop. I edited and uploaded the prior day's vlog, answered fifteen or so emails from various theatre administrations coordinating arrival schedules and lighting and sound requirements, sent a press release including several Boston reviews to the promoters in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, wrote out a more detailed itinerary of the next week to keep Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine in the loop about the schedule, answered some sponsorship queries, replied to some comments and tweets, planned for the meetup at noon, organized paperwork for our Canadian border crossing later that night, and eventually ended up just replying to comments and tweets until Rachel woke up.

When she woke up, she climbed quietly down from her bed and sat down next to me on the couch. "Good morning," she murmured, "You're up early."

I looked at my watch in surprise. It was eight o'clock. I shrugged. "I guess. I'm still kind of on European time."

Even though honestly eight o'clock didn't seem particularly early to me anymore.

She nodded. "Right. Gees. How're you adjusting to being back? It must be kind of weird, after you've been away for so long."

I shrugged. "I guess. But not really. I mean, it's not like I'm really 'back' anywhere. I've only been to Boston once before. In a lot of ways, everywhere is the same. It's not so much the place as the people that I have to adjust to."

"People as in me? And Blaine and Kurt?"

She started combing her mane of long hair as we talked. I said, "Of course. You guys. It's… I dunno. Emotional, I guess. More than I thought it would be."

She gave me a quiet smile and her maturity really struck me. She said, "Yeah. It's emotional for us too. You know… Don't take this the wrong way, but we'd all become really used to you being gone. We'd gotten used to just seeing your life on YouTube. Now that you're really here, you keep throwing me off guard, because I almost forget that you're a real person."

"Of course I'm a real person."

"I know," she said, "But I mean, for so long you were just this guy I used to love who I could watch live this completely foreign and bizarre life. Now you're here for real, and it's taking time to adjust to the fact that guy I used to love, the guy I watch on YouTube, and _you_ are all the same person. And it uh… well, it brings some stuff up. It's hard to adjust to you being back without remembering the reason you left."

I swallowed, feeling a proper wave of sadness. "Yeah," I said, "It's hard. I've been apart from everything for so long… I didn't realize how sharp and _real_ everything would become once I…" I trailed off, not really sure what I was trying to say.

Rachel kissed me. "It's okay, you know," she said, "You can talk about it. _We_ can talk about it. In fact, we probably _should _talk about it. Because it's obviously on all of our minds, with you being back and all. There's no sense being awkward and avoidant about a tragedy we've all experienced."

There was this huge, painful lump at the back of my throat that made answering her impossible. I brushed tears off my cheeks quickly, and she gave me a big hug. "Hey," she whispered, "Crying's good too."

I pulled her tiny torso close to mine and rested my chin on top of her head. Her arms curled around my body. I closed my eyes and took a moment to consciously appreciate how real and present Rachel Berry really was in this moment of my life. The relationship that Rachel and I had would never have become what it was if it hadn't been supplemented by the relationships we'd had with the friends that we'd lost. Through the connection that she and I still had, their memories could never be erased. Rachel and I got to grow up. They didn't. Being together again and noticing just how much we've both matured makes me proud and sad all at once.

After a long few moments of embracing Rachel, I felt movement in the RV, and I opened my eyes to see Blaine sitting up in bed and watching us. I realized that I was crying and that Rachel was too, and I felt a cold wave of something I couldn't put a name on. Blaine's eyes pierced mine for a fraction of an instant. He turned away slowly, and I let go of Rachel. She kissed me on the cheek and we quietly separated and began getting dressed for the day.


	10. He Makes Community

**Chapter Nine: He Makes Community**

I'd held meet-ups all over the world to give Peregrination fans a chance to meet each other and meet me. I loved finding out who was watching my videos and why, and I loved bringing people together and getting them to think about their choices and their lives. I had a pretty good system for running meet-ups, and I'd always gotten good feedback about them. However, I'd never had a meet-up with nearly as many people as showed up to the one in Boston, and it scared me a little. When Kurt, Rachel, Blaine, and I showed up at the park, there were hundreds of people waiting, and the noise when they saw us made my hair stand on end.

"Oh my god," said Blaine, "Tell me they aren't going to mob you."

I swallowed, and shook my head. "It's okay. I just tweeted telling them to stay where they are and let me talk. I've got a megaphone. Just stay calm, wave, and if they start crowding in, ask them to give us space. I'm going to go stand on that fence so they can see me."

People did start crowding in almost immediately, but Kurt and Blaine took it upon themselves to be my bodyguards, and the people closest to where I was walking did their best to stand their ground while people farther back tried to push forward.

I sprinted to a tall wooded planked fence and climbed up it so that I could see up over the excited crowd. I turned on my megaphone and called out. "Hello Boston!"

The screaming made Rachel take a few nervous steps backward. She climbed the fence and sat beside me while Kurt and Blaine waved at the ever advancing crowd.

"If I could just get everyone to stand exactly where they are," I called out, "I promise that we'll all get a chance to chat eventually."

The crowd got louder as people yelled at each other to shut up and stand still, and then it slowly quieted down.

"Awesome!" I said, "Thank you so much. I don't think any of us are in the mood for a riot today. This is insane! I've never seen a meet-up this big before."

Everyone cheered, and I took out my camera. "On the count of three, I want you all to call out 'Boston!,' okay? One, two, three!"

The noise was unbelievable, and it was another thirty seconds after I turned off the camera before they calmed down again.

"Alright, here's the deal," I yelled into my megaphone, "We've got about two hours before we have to hit the road for Montreal. I want to meet all of you, and I want to give you guys a chance to meet each other, and to meet my friends, but we're going to have to do it in an organized fashion if there is going to be time. So this is how this is going to work. I want everyone stay where they are while I give the instructions, and then move as quickly as possible once I say go. Are you ready?"

The crowd cheered. I said, "Okay. So when I say go, I need you all to spread out and get into groups of twenty people. Not yet! Wait until I finish talking. Don't worry if you know the people, just pick a bunch of people close to you, and sit in a circle somewhere with a group. It doesn't have to be exactly twenty, but try to make it close. Once your there, choose ONE person—and please, make sure it's ONLY one person from your group who has a cellphone, preferably a smartphone. Get that person to text 'Boston Peregrination' to the number 34664."

People started taking out their phones, and I repeated, "Again, wait until you're in a group of twenty, and then get ONE person to text 'Boston Peregrination' to 34664. If you forget the number, it spells FINNH. 34664. Text "Boston Peregrination.' Okay? If it works properly, you'll be sent a link to a secret page on my blog that will tell you what your group's number is. Kurt, Blaine, Rachel, and I will be coming around to visit each group, switching every five minutes. When it's your group's turn for one of us to come see you, you will get a text message with our name, and you will start shouting that name to show us here your group is sitting. Does that make sense?"

People shouted in mixed agreement, and I said, "Okay. In that first link that you will be sent, there will also be a list of questions and activities. While you are waiting for one of us to come to your group, use what is in this email in whatever way works for your group in order to get to know each other. We're all here for the same reason, so take this unique opportunity to meet new people and expose your stories and experiences to people you might never have known otherwise."

Rachel, Blaine and Kurt were all listening to me with the same slightly awed expression that the crowd is, and it was a little disconcerting.

I said, "So, to sum up, I need you to get into a group, text Boston Peregrination to 34664, and then follow the instructions in the text messages that you receive. Ready? Go!"

People started moving quickly, and Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine all turned and cornered me on the fence. "You didn't tell us that we'd be doing that!" Kurt hissed, "What are we supposed to say to people?"

I grinned, "I dunno. Introduce yourself. Ask people why they're here. Answer what they have to ask. Take pictures. Hug people. It's going to be like five minutes a group. Start doing a drama game or go around the circle answering a question. You'll figure it out. You just have to meet people. Connect with them."

I got a text message that group one was ready, and heard a group twenty feet away start shouting for me, so I wished my friends luck and ran over to begin meeting Bostontonians.

"Hey!" I called out, approaching the group, "How's everyone doing?"

They all cheered and started talking at once. Several of them were filming me. I said, "Okay stay in the circle. I'll come around and you'll each have a bout ten seconds for a chat or a hug or a picture or whatever. I know it's a bummer that we have to move so quickly, but try to remember that the meet-up is about the community connecting with each other, and not just with me. Stick around and get to know each other after I move on, okay?"

And I did; I took pictures, I got hugs, I listened to stories, I answered questions, I gave advice, and I learned more and more about the unbelievable passion and intelligence of my audience. Over the next two hours, I met somewhere around five hundred people, including many who had travelled from outside of the city to meet me, and many more who had been at the show the night before and had great things to say about it. I even met the girl who chaired the Boston Peregrination society, and she gave me her email address so we could get in touch when I had the time.

It was insanely exhausting to meet that many people, and obviously it became a little repetitive and overwhelming at times. Still, no matter how many meet-ups I held and people I met, I never failed to be amazed at how rewarding and inspiring it was to have made an impact on so many people big enough that they would take time out of their day to come meet me. The journey that I'd chronicled on my vlog over the last few years had been hugely important to me; it had helped me heal and mature and figure out what it meant to be passionate.

Those people in that park had shared that journey with me, and each and every one of them were going through their own journeys—journeys that might play out a little bit differently from having watched my vlogs and heard my ideas.

So I cherished every exhausting moment of meeting people.

Once we'd been around to every circle, Rachel, Kurt, Blaine and I stood on the fence again, and I said through my megaphone, "Thank you all for your support and your passion. It's been a pleasure finally getting to meet you all. We have to head out now, but feel free to continue talking and mingling amongst each other after I'm gone. Remember; we're all Peregrinators and we're all on journeys, so let's bond together and make that journey easier on all of us."

The crowd cheered and I filmed it for my vlog, and then Kurt, Blaine, Rachel, and I disappeared into the RV. Kurt took the wheel and we drove away.

After a few moments of nervousness as a crowd of people chased the RV and we scrambled to bring up maps on our smartphones, we found the highway we needed to take us up to Canada, and I could finally relax a little.

"Oi," I said, "Thanks for doing that with me, guys. I know it's stressful. If it's too much, you don't have to come with me to all of them."

Kurt shook his head, "No," he said, "That was really really powerful. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Blaine nodded quietly, watching me with his masked, unreadable eyes. Rachel said, "I had no idea that you did stuff like that. I thought you were just going to go meet people. But that was… kind of amazing. The way you brought people together and got them to start talking and connect with each other."

Kurt said, "Yeah. People were really emotional in a few of the groups I went to. Those questions and activities you had them doing… where did you come up with that stuff?"

I shrugged. "It's all been developed over years of trial and error. I just figure that there's no point in a group of people coming together to celebrate one person's journey—my journey—when all of them are on journeys of their own. So I've tried to develop a system that gets everyone to recognise and share with each other what events led to them all being together in that place at the same time. I've never done it with a group that big before. It was so rushed. Do you think people really got into it?"

"Oh yeah," Rachel said, "It was rushed for you, running around to each group, but the groups themselves got to spend two hours together. The prompts you gave them to get discussion going were potent enough to turn those two hours into something pretty significant. Almost every group I went to was very engaged and invested in the whole thing."

Nodding, Kurt said, "Well done, Finn. I… yeah, I'm impressed. Beyond impressed. You could probably make a lot of money running seminars based on what you gave them all for free in a single text message."

I felt embarrassed, wondering why they were all looking at me with such intent, curious eyes. "Well," I said, "I've met a lot of people over the years. I know how to get them talking. And I know how important talking is. So there you have it. Thanks for helping. I'm sorry if the meetups distract from the real purpose of the tour. I just can't justify going places and not meeting the people."

Blaine, who had been very quiet since we'd returned to the RV, said, "I think that what you did for all of those people is a lot more significant than what our play does for people, so of course you need to keep bringing that to people. Don't even think about apologizing for it."

"No," I said sharply, "No, it's not more important. Don't think that for a moment."

Rachel agreed, "They're two separate things. We make art, he makes community. And I think it's pretty overwhelmingly clear that people are extremely effected by both."

Nodding, Kurt said, "Everyone was so kind to me about _Soundtrack. _They seem to really have connected with it."

With a small, proud smile, Blaine said, "I know. It made me tear up a few times. I got nothing but compliments on it. And thoughtful compliments too, which is important."

Rachel hugged him. "You deserve all of the compliments in the world. _Soundtrack_ is a masterpiece. Between that and Finn's meetups, I think that a lot of people are going to be very positively influenced by this little tour."

I said, "I think so too."

And I think we all tried not to reveal how hard we were trying not to both cry and beam with pride.


	11. Familiar with the Unfamiliar

**Chapter Eleven: Familiar with the Unfamiliar **

We hit the Canadian border at around six o'clock that evening. I'd crossed a lot of borders in my life, so I was pretty good at untangling convoluted requirements to figure out what paperwork was necessary, but crossing a border with an RV and a trailer full of sets and sound equipment and merchandise was very different than crossing with a backpack and a laptop. We were travelling to Canada to do for-profit shows and sell merchandise. There were tax forms, work permits, equipment inventories, passports, forms and contracts from our promoters in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, and a bunch of other paperwork I barely understood.

I'd had help and advice from our promoters, from Blaine's agent, and from the Avonroy foundation, so I was pretty confident that we had every right to cross the border, but the fact that I was a US citizen who had only been in the USA for two days out of the last four years raised flags with the crossing guards, and thus a nightmare began.

I got questioned with surprising hostility for about an hour and a half, and then they searched every inch of our RV and trailer and demanded explanations for everything from the box of t-shirts in the trailer to the condoms in Rachel's purse to the prescription medication in Blaine's duffle bag. We ended up spending almost four hours at the border.

Needless to say, when we finally made it into Quebec, the celebration in the RV was one of extreme relief.

"Here's hoping we can get back across on Tuesday," Kurt said.

I shrugged. "We'll worry about that when the time comes."

I was pretty excited to be going back, since Canada had been the first country outside of the USA that I'd explored for Peregrination, and it had been in Canada that I'd fallen in love with travel.

We made our way towards Montreal, and Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine all kept looking out the windows excitedly, commenting on the French road signs and the speed limits in Kilometers.

I tried not to grin too much, even though I found their fascination with it all quite humorous and almost sad at the same time. I was so familiar with the unfamiliar that I felt more at home in Quebec than I had in the states, but I didn't want to seem smug or pretentious about it. I'd met a lot of people on my travels who felt that having travelled the world made them superior to people who hadn't. I refused to become one of those people. "Is this your first time in Canada?" I asked.

We'd all grown up within a two hour drive of Canada, but I'd been eighteen the first time I crossed the border, so I could hardly judge them if they never had.

"Yeah," said Blaine, "I was invited up for a music festival in Ottawa once, but I ended up not having the cash to get a flight."

Rachel said, "Me either."

Kurt nodded, "I have been, but not for a very very long time."

I still don't know if Kurt knew that I knew that his mother, who'd died when Kurt was a kid, had been French-Canadian. My step-dad, Burt, had told me about her once over pizza before a football game once in my senior year.

I said, "Hmm. Well, we'll have to do some sightseeing. How good is your French?"

Blaine and Rachel chattering in theatrically accented French. I knew bits and pieces of so many languages that I couldn't keep track of any of them, but I remembered enough about French to know that what they were saying was mostly nonsense. I grinned until I caught Kurt's eye; he didn't seem particularly amused.

Blaine seemed to notice at the same moment that I did, and he switched back to English quickly. He said, "Well, I personally think that we need to party tonight."

"I'll say," said Kurt, swiftly shaking off whatever it was that he was feeling, "We've got tons to celebrate. Finn's return, Blaine's graduation, our engagement, the premier of _Soundtrack…_ I say we park the RV, find a pub, and have some fun."

Grinning, Rachel said, "I second _that_ motion."

Exactly how we got from that conversation to me having sex with Rachel in a Montreal karaoke bar bathroom, I couldn't quite tell you.

"Fucking hell," she slurred, pulling her dress back over her shoulders and letting me zip her up, "I swear to God, I'm not usually this much of a whore."

I laughed, pushing her hair out of her face so that I could kiss her. "This isn't whoring," I tell her in all of my drunken wisdom, "This is just living life."

She giggled and lost her balance a little, leaning into me. "We're living, alright."

I kissed her again and she shakes her head. "Uh-uh," she said. "Come on. Karaoke time! When's the last time you sang a song?"

And then the next morning, as I went through footage on my camera for the vlog, I found a clip of Rachel and I belting "You're the One That I Want," to a crowd of jeering Francophones while Kurt snorted with laughter from the camera.

"Fuck my life," Rachel groaned, sitting down beside me as I edited the footage, "What _happened_ last night?"

"Alcohol happened," I said.

She groaned again and said, "Never again."

I laughed, but it made my head hurt.

Rachel went into the bathroom to take a shower, and Kurt and Blaine both stayed in bed, muttering occasional hangover complaints while I rushed through my vlog and tour managing duties for the day.

About five minutes later, Rachel emerged from the bathroom in a rage. "That fucking shower is a piece of shit," she said, "I need a real fucking shower, please."

"What's wrong with it?" I asked, amused by her outrage even though I probably should have been frightened by it.

She said, "Well, first of all, the temperature won't regulate itself, so it keep going from hot to cold without warning… and there's not enough pressure to have a hope in hell of getting the shampoo out of your hair… plus it's too fucking tiny to move more than half an inch in anyway… oh my _God_, are you kidding me? How are we supposed to live like this for four months?"

I shrugged. "Most of the theatres we're going to will have showers in the dressing rooms. Some campgrounds will have them too. Don't worry about it."

She looked like she was going to scream. "Ew," she said, "Ew. Oh my god. Four months of public showers? Kill me now."

"Shut up, Rachel," muttered Kurt from his bed, "Shhh."

I nodded. "Yeah. Rachel, there's nothing we can do about it."

She put her and on her hip and gave an outraged sniff of fury. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the RV.

I caught Kurt's eye and quickly followed her.

"Come on, Rachel," I said, "I didn't mean to be mean."

But suddenly, she had her arms around me and was sobbing into my chest. Alarmed, I stood with my arms at my side and let her.

"I know that I signed up for this, but all I want is my own bed a warm shower," she told me, "I don't know how I'm going to get through sixteen weeks of this life."

We were only two days into the tour. If she was already feeling like this, we might be in trouble. I said, "You're hungover, Rachel. It's going to be okay. Trust me, you're going to get used to it."

She kept crying, and I had no idea what to do. It had been way way way too long since I'd had to deal with a Rachel freak-out, and I couldn't remember what to do. "Come on, Rachel," I said, "You get to perform in a beautiful play for audiences all across the continent. You're building your own future. Of course it's hard, but that's life. You know that."

She nodded, still snuggled against my chest. "I know. I know. I just need to hate it for a minute, okay? Don't lecture me."

So I let her cry some more and tried not to wonder if getting back with her so quickly hadn't been a gigantic mistake.


	12. Valuable Love

**Chapter Twelve: Valuable Love**

We wasted our morning in Montreal on hangovers and self-doubt, but by the time we met the Quebecois Peregrinators in a park at noon, we were all feeling better.

The meetup was much smaller than the Boston one, much to my relief. I hadn't spent time in English-speaking regions for the last couple of years, so I was much more accustomed to holding meetups with smaller, more intimate crowds. Montreal was obviously a bigger crowd than Bucharest had been the week before, but it was still much more manageable than Boston. I left the meetup feeling emotionally satisfied and newly excited to be on tour.

Kurt and Blaine disappeared off somewhere together after lunch, leaving Rachel and I to do some sightseeing together. After her breakdown that morning, things felt stiff and awkward, but we both tried our utmost to pretend it wasn't.

"I don't know why those boys couldn't have at least told us where they were going," said Rachel, "If they're not back in time to get the stage set up, I won't be happy."

Rachel always had been the type of girl who thought she had the right to know everything about everyone. I smiled and said, "They'll be back. Just give Kurt his space to do what he's got to do."

Tilting her head questioningly, Rachel asked, "What do you mean? Kurt? Do you know something I don't?"

I felt myself blushing a little, just like I did every time I accidently said too much. "Oh," I said, "No. Well, not really."

She put her hand on her hip. "Oh come on, Finn," she said, "What is it?"

"All I know is that Kurt had family in Montreal at some point. How significant that is to him, I don't really know."

He eyes narrowed. "Ah. Really? How do you know that? He's never mentioned it to me."

"Burt told me, years ago," I said, shrugging, "Apparently Kurt's mom spoke French with Kurt all the time when he was a kid. It drove Burt crazy, because he didn't understand a word of it."

Rachel laughed, but her smile faded pretty quickly. "So it's his mom's side, huh?"

"Yeah," I said.

She said, "Hmm."

She dropped the subject, and I respected her for it. We walked through Old Montreal hand in hand, seeing what there was to see and making small talk about conversations we'd had at the gathering and upcoming tour destinations we were looking forward to.

Rachel, I was coming to realize, was still the girl she'd been in high school; self-important, self-congratulatory, and way too intense. But somehow over the last five years, she'd restructured that once grating personality into something extremely confident, unapologetic, and very self-aware.

When I was sixteen, I'd fallen in love with a girl who had been insufferably ambitious at the same time as cripplingly insecure. Very few people had the patience to put up with her. _Nobody_ had the right to try to rein in her insane dreams and insane talent via any flavor of relationships, but I tried anyway.

Our relationship had been difficult and frustrating, but so intense and so emotionally significant that I'd almost married her before we even graduated high school. Our breakup came at time in my life when I was fucked up about so many other things that that grief just blended into all of the other griefs, but five years later, I couldn't look at her and not remember the most painful, impossible, _valuable_ love of my life.

She and I were back together, but we had a lot of work to do before that could really mean anything. As we walked through Montreal, I came to understand that neither of us were quite ready to do that work just yet. We needed a few more days of denial and insanely satisfying sex. We could untangle our feelings and our futures later.

We met Blaine and Kurt at the theatre that afternoon, and neither of them gave any indication of where they'd been. However, the way they were holding hands and seemingly unable to keep their heads more than a few inches apart from one another gave me the distinct impression that something significant had occurred between the two of them. I tried not to make it too obvious that I was watching the small smiles and kisses and whispers that the two of them shared all through setting up for the show.

That night's show was in a smaller theatre with a smaller audience, but I was much more emotionally prepared for it than I had been in Boston. I enjoyed the show for what it was, sometimes forgetting entirely that I was on the stage too and that the actors were my friends.

_Soundtrack _really was brilliant. The concept was unique, and the staging was striking. A huge projector screen suspended seven feet in the air stood at the front of the stage, displaying a silent film that Rachel directed at NYADA. The film showed a world where everyone's life is a musical. Back on stage, in the shadow the projector, the real story played out. The characters on stage were cursed to a life of providing the soundtrack to the musical on the screen.

My whole role in the show was to play drums and say nothing, but the roles that Blaine, Kurt, and Rachel played were seriously ambitious. With no crew to help them, they had to time their lines, their songs, and their movements with the projection above their heads. They had to sing, play their instruments, dance, and act simultaneously. They had to make an unrealistic world seem real. They had to make people laugh uncontrollably for an hour and a half but still rise in ovation at the end with tears in their eyes and new perspectives on their mind.

I didn't know very much about theatre, but I knew that the shivers down my spine and the tears on my cheeks meant something. I knew that the praise from the people who came to buy CDs and t-shirts after the show was genuine. And I knew that the feeling of shared purpose between Rachel, Kurt, Blaine and I as we left the theatre that night was powerful in ways that almost nothing else was.

We drove to Ottawa in exhausted silence.


	13. How Lonely You've Been

**Chapter Thirteen: How Lonely You've Been**

"It's weird, you know," I told my camera late at night after our show in Ottawa, "I feel like the entire pace of my life has changed. Things have sped up. We're moving from city to city quickly, and my days are about meeting people, putting on shows, and spending time with my friends."

I shrugged, glancing out at the quiet midnight of the campground we were parked in, "It's not what I'm used to, I guess," I said. "I used to do meetups a few times a month, and now I'm doing them every other day. I used to travel to see the sights and live the culture. This kind of touring is a whole new ball game."

Hasitly, I added, "Not that I'm complaining. No, not at all. New experiences are good. It was time to find new focus in my life. I think we all knew that. I believe in _Soundtrack_ from the bottom of my heart, and I'm willing to sacrifice a lot to help it be successful. This tour has added new purpose to my life, and it feels good. It's just… well, we're on day five, and I already feel like my old life of wandering for the sake of wandering is a million years in the past."

I shifted the camera a little, lying down on the picnic table. "Of course, the biggest change is being back with my friends. Maybe I should say this to them and not to the world, but it's an intensely emotional experience, reuniting with old friends after half a decade apart. It's difficult. If there's anyone out there who ever ran away from their past the way I did… please do yourself a favour and take the time to reconnect. It might be painful and it might be a mistake, but if you don't go back…"

I swallowed, looking up at the stars. "If you don't go back, you might never realize how lonely you've been."

I turned off my camera while I reined in my emotions and untangled my thoughts.

After a moment I started filming again and said, "There is five years of video evidence on this channel to prove that I have lived a very eventful and rewarding life since 2012. I have no regrets about the life I'm living. But as you know, my life since I started vlogging has been all about the Right Now. It's been about emerging yourself in the present and finding ways to enjoy every single moment of your life. And it's a good way to live. I will forever advocate taking the time to live the way I've lived."

More quietly, I said, "Don't take this as me renouncing everything I've preached for years, but do remember that the present is only the present because of where it comes from and what it's leading to. In other words, your past and your future are just as much of your present as the air you are breathing. I've neglected to recognise that for a long time. And now I'm finally starting to allow the past and the future to infiltrate my consciousness. It's intense. I'm feeling things.

I told my vlog, "It's easy to forget why things were important to you when they aren't part of your life, but that doesn't mean that you should keep them out forever. I've reunited with some friends, and it's making me deal with issues I didn't know I had. So take the time to tie up the loose ends. Go backwards so that you can move forwards. You know. Reconnect."

Laughing a little, I remind the camera, "We all know that when I get all rambly and preachy like this that I'm not trying to tell you how to live your lives. I don't know you better than you know you. The advice that I give is based on my own experiences. I'm telling you how I live my life and hoping that you'll find a way to fit it into the context of your own life and find value of some kind in it."

"Anyway, I'll say goodnight now. Ottawa is beautiful. Thank you to everyone who came out to the meetup and to the show. I can't possible tell you how much it means to me that what I do means enough to you that you take the time to come participate in my meetups and watch my friends' brilliant show. Goonight!"


	14. They'd Already Lost Enough

**Chapter Fourteen: They'd Already Lost Enough**

About ten minutes before we were planning to walk down to a park for a meetup with fans in Toronto, I got a call from the park administrator telling me that they were setting up barricades and sound equipment for me.

"We'll have a couple of our uniformed parks guys escort you to the stage," the woman on the phone said, "We don't want you to get trampled."

Grimacing at the thought, I said, "Oh my god, I am so sorry. I had no idea that so many people would show up."

She said, "Nothing to apologise for. You did everything right, booking the space and forwarding a deposit."

I said, "Okay. So what sort of charge will there be for these extra precautions?"

"Oh no," she said, "No charge. This isn't a big deal. Consider it a favour. I'm a big fan, and I just don't want to see you hurt."

"Oh, well thank you! How many people are there?"

"Our best estimate is six hundred," she told me, "And we're all very excited."

So I thanked her profusely, and Kurt, Blaine, Rachel and I walked over to the park for the longest and most exhausting meetup of my life.

I'll say a million times that I'm grateful for my fans and that I love meeting them, but there honestly is nothing more taxing on your emotions and your body than meeting hundreds of people and feeling like you're letting each of them down by not being able to give them all the sort of individual attention that they're giving you.

I'm really trying to gain a better understanding of my audience's motives for participating in this little world I've created online, but it's very difficult to do that when there's so much pressure to answer questions, take pictures, and share my time equally between hundreds and hundreds of excited people.

And having Rachel, Kurt, and Blaine there at the meetpus, suddenly part of this world that had been my own for so long, made me strangely self-conscious and disoriented. I didn't know why it's the people I care about most who make me question myself when strangers never phased me. It had me so confused and tired that I fell asleep almost as soon as we got back to the RV.

When I woke up again, Blaine was driving, and Kurt was sitting next to him in the passenger's seat, leaning off of his seat to have a hushed conversation with his fiancé. Rachel was fast asleep in her bed above them. I was sprawled out on the couch behind the driver's seat, and it was plain that Kurt and Blaine hadn't noticed me wake up, because their quiet conversation never lapsed.

I closed my eyes again and tried to return to sleep, but it was hard not to overhear what Kurt and Blaine were talking about.

"Well that's not really fair," Kurt was saying, "I don't think he actually has any concept of how famous he is. He's lived in his own crazy world for too long."

"I mean, that's not fair though either," Blaine said, "Because he's not self-contained. His world might be crazy, but he doesn't isolate himself in it. He knows how big his audience is, and he works hard to keep them engaged."

After a pause, Kurt said, "Okay. But even if that's true, I still don't think that he has ulterior motives here. I really think he's here because he wants to reconnect and help us."

"Oh, for sure," said Blaine, "He absolutely wants to. But I also think that he's got bigger plans for himself and his future that have very little to do with us."

They're talking about me, and I can't bring myself to let them know I'm awake.

"So you think he's using our tour as an accessory in a larger plan? That doesn't sound like Finn."

"No. He's not using us, not necessarily. But he is using his fame."

"Blaine, it couldn't be clearer that he's grateful for what he has. He does right by his fans."

"I know. Look, I'm not trying to insult your stepbrother. He's using his fame for good, not evil. I just think that it's a bit naïve of you to keep talking about Finn like he came here just for us."

"So what did he come here for? Why come back to America when he's so capable of wandering forever, if not for us?"

Blaine said, "All those meetups? Talking to all of those people and getting them to talk to each other? He's trying to start a movement, Kurt. I read his blog, you know. About the worldwide collective? He's got some great ideas. And I think that he's here to test the waters. Most of his audience is in North America, and he hadn't been on the continent for years. He's here to face his audience in person and evaluate what his next step is going to be in uniting them together for something bigger than what they are now."

"Jesus," Kurt said, "You make it sound so cold and revolutionary. I hardly thing he's that calculating."

"Well, maybe that's your problem," Blaine said, "Our friends always talk like his success is a miraculous fluke. You all remember Finn as the confused and aimless teenager he was in high school. You talk like he ran away because he was sad and scared, and he just happened to stumble into success. You talk like us convincing him to come back is a huge accomplishment."

"And you disagree?" Kurt asked, "I mean, we spent _years_ trying to get through to him that he still had people who loved him back home. Getting him to acknowledge that is _hugely _important for him."

"See, but you always do that," Blaine said, "I know you mean well, and we both know how much I needed everything you've done for me. But you have it in your head that because you weren't at the school that day, you aren't as broken as those of us who were. And that that means you have to fix us. You think that having Finn back means that Finn's not sad and scared anymore. You act like his return marks the end of an era of hurt and confusion. And I just don't think that's the case."

"Okay," Kurt said, "So what is the case?"

Blaine said, "I don't think you give him enough credit for his intelligence. He's in the position he is now because he's made some very smart decisions based on a very level-headed and calculated perspective on the world. He was away for so long because he was ambitious enough to make a goal and chase it until he reached it, not because he was afraid of what he left behind. And he's back now because he has a new goal, not because he's reached any kind of closure or peace."

I kept my jaw clenched tight shut. I was used to having people analyze my life, but again, it was a lot harder when the people weren't strangers.

Kurt said, "Even if you're right, I think it's a pretty big step for him to come back. All I wanted to know was whether or not he'd talked to you at all. You know. About the reason he left in the first place."

"No," Blaine said, "No, he and I haven't really had a conversation yet."

Sounding frustrated, Kurt said, "I don't know why it's so easy for him to share every day of his life with strangers, and so impossible for him to talk to the people closest to him about the hardest day of all of our lives."

"Because it's hard," Kurt said, "And you know that. What is there to say that five years of absence hasn't already told us? We've talked about this, Kurt. The fact of the matter is that he left. He forced us to lose him when we'd already lost enough. That was his choice, and no matter how we feel about it, we can't change it. I don't think he's sorry."

My stomach twisted. I forced them to lose me when they'd already lost enough.

I'd never thought about it that way.

Never in five years had I considered how insanely selfish leaving had been.

Kurt said, "He doesn't have to be sorry. I just want to know if he's okay. If he's ever planning on talking about it. Cry about it. Something."

For a moment, I thought that Blaine is going to tell Kurt about seeing me crying with Rachel. But all he says is, "So talk to him about it. Honestly, Kurt, I don't think that Finn's afraid of talking about it. I just don't think he knows how."

Nodding, Kurt said thoughtfully, "I wonder if he's talked to Rachel. You do realize that they're sleeping together already, don't you?"

I felt myself blushing from where I was laying, but Blaine sounded skeptical. "Do you think so?"

"I'm pretty sure," Kurt said, "There's not nearly enough awkwardness between them for them to be ex-lovers. They've got to be ex-ex-lovers."

I rolled over slowly and mumbled a little as though I was just waking up, and they both giggled a little and stopped talking.

I sat up.

"Where are we?"


	15. We've Rebuilt Without You

**Chapter Fifteen: We've Rebuilt Without You**

We crossed the border into Michigan without any major delays. I silently thanked the universe. While Kurt and Rachel worried about the security of the campsite we found in Detroit, I went for a long run around the campground road loops in order to avoid eye contact with my friends.

I had that anxious, guilty, heavy feeling in my throat and stomach—as if I'd just had a huge fight with someone I loved. Whatever casual familiarity I'd thought I still had with Kurt, Blaine, and Rachel had suddenly disappeared, and I felt awkward and strange around them. For a week, I'd enjoyed their company and felt as comfortable around them as I had in high school, but suddenly I just couldn't feel that way anymore.

Suddenly, I felt like I was a stranger in a tight-knit union of soldiers who could never really relate to or trust men like me who hadn't fought alongside them in battle.

I'd left them to fight without me while I avoided the war altogether.

I don't know who I thought I was kidding, coming back and acting like my absence hadn't fundamentally changed the nature of everything we all felt about each other. I don't know what I was thinking.

To be honest, I'd never really thought very much about what my friends thought about me and my choices. I'd worried a lot about how they were doing, and I'd wondered a lot about what they were up to, but I'd never really considered what the impact of my absence had really been on them. And once I started considering it, I felt like the biggest asshole on the planet.

Blaine was under the impression that I agreed to tour with them so that I could meet my American fans and start laying the groundwork for my next big project. Kurt was under the impression that I agreed to tour with them because I wanted to face up to what I'd left behind and start mending bridges. The truth was that they were both entirely right and entirely wrong at the same time, and even I didn't know what the real answer was.

All I knew was that I'd fallen in love with _Soundtrack,_ and I'd seized it as an excuse to go back to America. Now that I was there, I had to figure out why.

Things were a lot easier when I travelled alone and didn't have to worry about anyone else.

But I guess that's what caused this problem in the first place.

When I got back to the RV, sweating and breathing hard after my run, I found Rachel sitting outside the RV, scrolling through Youtube comments on her iPhone.

When she saw me approaching, she stood up. "Wanna go for a walk?" she asked quickly, "I think Kurt and Blaine need some uh… privacy."

She smirked a little, and I tried not to think about what the boys might have been getting up to inside of the RV. I followed Rachel back out of the campsite and down the road again.

I could tell immediately when she didn't take my hand in hers that her perspective on our relationship had shifted too.

My stomach sank as I realized that our week of blissful, avoidant, emotional togetherness was about to end.

"We should talk," she said, and I didn't respond.

I wasn't really ready to address all of the reasons why her and I shouldn't be together.

"I think we should maybe take a time out," Rachel said, "I mean, a time out from us."

I still didn't respond. She said, "I just feel like we're being crazy. Jumping right back in like this. We can't act like this isn't crazy, can we?"

"It's not crazy," I said, "It's just spontaneous. We're thinking about how we feel now and nothing else."

"And that's not crazy?"

Shrugging, I said, "That's how I live my life."

She said, "Well, it's not how I live mine. And we've talked about why we broke up. We both seem to have closure and understanding about that. But I don't think either of us understand why we're back together."

"Honestly, Rachel," I said, "I don't think I understand any part of my life right now."

Sounding frustrated, Rachel said, "I look at you, and I feel… I don't know. Like you're not real. You're this shadow from my past that makes me feel… things I haven't felt for a long time. And I just want you to hold me and make me feel like I felt back in high school when I thought the world couldn't hurt me…"

She trailed off, and I didn't know how to respond. She said, "But that's not right. Because you're your own person with your own life and goals and future that probably have nothing to do with me. And it's not fair to either of us if we just fall back in love with each other and then have our hearts broken again when our paths go off in separate directions again."

I nodded slowly, watching the ground in front of us as we walked. I said, "I wish I could convince you that it's worth the risk. That we shouldn't overthink what makes us feel alive. But I guess I know you're not wired that way."

Sadly, Rachel said, "Look, I'm not saying we can never be together. I'm just saying that I need some time to think. Maybe we should talk about the future. Where is this going? What's going to happen when the tour ends?"

I said, "Rachel, you know I don't have the answer to that."

She said, "Well, figure it out. Because I know where I'll be."

"You know that I can't just decide to move to New York and be with you forever. We don't know each other well enough for that."

"I'm not asking you to do that," she said, "I just need… Well, I don't know what I need. All I know is that I can't keep sleeping with you until we figure out why we're doing it. Is this a nostalgia thing, or are we honestly attracted to each other? Are we honestly ready to face all of the drama that a relationship between the two of us will inevitably create?"

"I don't know," I said, "So let's take a break."

The relief I felt when she nodded made me feel weird and guilty and extremely sad all at once.

"Let's take a break," she nodded. "But promise me this doesn't mean it'll be awkward."

We stopped walking and sat down on a bench. "I'll try," I said, "Just answer one thing for me?"

"What?" she asked.

"How much did you all hate me? For leaving?"

Her face changed and she sighed, pushing her hair out of her face so that she could see my face more clearly. "It's hard to hate the people you love when you know how easily they can be taken away from you forever, Finn."

"So you didn't hate me?"

"No," Rachel said, "I think I wanted to… but I had enough hard things to deal with. Hating you wasn't worth it."

"But I hurt you."

"Sure. But it's not like you're the only one who was left. Nobody who graduated our year ever went back to Lima. Blaine and Tina left the minute they had the chance. We all ran. You just ran further."

"The difference is that you were all already gone," I said, "You'd all moved away before it happened. I left _because_ it happened, and I didn't keep in touch."

She sighed. "I know. Look, I _get_ why you did what you did, and I have no hard feelings. But yeah, it pissed some people off. You shared your life with the world, but you never called or emailed or gave any indication that anything that ever happened in Lima still mattered to you. When Kurt said you'd agreed to come with us on tour, nobody would believe him."

I swallowed. "Okay. I'm sorry."

"Look, I know you're a _carpe diem_ type of guy, but not all of us can think that way. When our world fell apart, you found a lifestyle that meant you never had to put it back together. I'm not saying that you haven't struggled or grieved, but I think that those of us who stayed put and had to rebuild went through something very different. I don't hate you, and I don't think Kurt or Blaine hate you, but I'd be lying if I said that there hadn't been some resentment over the years. And I'd be lying if I said it's not weird to have you suddenly a part of the lives we've rebuilt without you. You hurt us when you cut us out. You did. And I didn't know if you knew it."

"I'm slowly starting to realize," I said.

She said, "Well, don't beat yourself up. We move forwards, not backwards. The past is past. I'm just glad you're a part of our lives again. But I just don't think I'm ready to jump back into a relationship with you."

"Because you think I'm going to abandon you again?"

With a small, apologetic smile, she said, "Maybe."


	16. From the Sky

**Chapter 16: From the Sky**

Being included in the Avonroy series meant that we were staging the show in established and locally respected playhouses and performing arts centres. We weren't performing huge auditoriums or stadiums or anything, but we were playing in spaces that we'd never have had a chance of booking if it weren't for Blaine's Avonroy grant. Most of the venues had between 300 and 800 seats, and we were easily filling all of them. The old shows on the RattleBingBang YouTube channel were getting thousands of views a day, and my friend's twitter follower counts were on the steep incline. We'd gotten solid reviews in every city we'd been to yet, and theatre blogs online were starting to get talk about us.

Several cities had asked us to stay an extra night or add matinee shows. We were being moved to larger spaces in Seattle, LA, San Diego, and Las Vegas.

"This is insane," Blaine said, when he read logged on to Twitter to find he'd gotten a thousand new followers since he'd woken up that morning. "Finn, you are a marketing genius."

I grinned, flattered that he attributed the success of his masterpiece to my hard work. "I do my best," I said in an exaggeratedly modest tone, laughing. "But no, your show sells itself."

"With your help," Kurt said. "Incredible."

Nodding, Rachel said, "When my friend Carissa toured with an indie show for Avonroy, they barely sold half the tickets. This is fantastic."

I was proud of their success. "Congrats," I said.

We were en route to Columbus, Ohio, and there was a strangely electric tension in the air. As we spoke, we were less than forty miles from our hometown of Lima, and I knew that none of us were at all interested in getting any closer.

I felt like one of us should mention it, but we all pretended we were completely unaware of where we were.

Just when I thought Kurt was going to break the ice and say something, Rachel got to her feet very suddenly and darted into the bathroom. I grimaced when the sounds of vomiting echoes back out after her.

"Oh Jesus," I said, glancing in the rear view mirror. Kurt and Blaine went back to check on her, and I pulled the RV over into a rest stop.

"It's okay," Rachel said miserably, after vomiting twice more, "I'm okay. I shouldn't try to read while we're driving."

"Motion sickness?" asked Kurt sympathetically.

Rachel rinsed out her mouth with water, nodding. "I just need to sit up front and watch the horizon. I'm sorry."

Kurt gave her a hug and said, "Maybe we should go for a walk. Settle your stomach. Sound good?"

She nodded. "I could use some fresh air."

We all got out of the RV and walked slowly through the familiar central Ohio terrain. We walked a long ways, all of us deep in thought. Nobody spoke much until the wind started picking up and we saw the clouds rolling in.

"Perfect," said Blaine, stopping in his tracks. "A storm."

We watched the lightning in the distance for a moment.

Another gust of wind hit, and we all started running back to the RV at the same time. The rain started when we were about halfway there, and by the time we all piled inside, we were dripping wet and giggling.

"Ah yes," said Kurt, passing towels to all of us, "Nothing like an Ohio rainstorm."

Laughing, Blaine said, "Nothing says home like a Fuck You from the sky."

Rachel and I laughed. She said, "It's a sign. The world doesn't want us here. Let's get out."

We were back on the road within five minutes.

"I think this is the closest to Lima I've been since Blaine and Tina's graduation," Rachel said, watching a road sign pointing to Lima pass on the roadside.

"Same," said Kurt, and Blaine nodded.

I was surprised. "You haven't even been back for holidays?"

Rachel said, "My dads and me always go on vacation for holidays."

"Yeah, and Dad and Carole always come to me in New York," said Kurt.

Blaine said nothing.

I looked over the horizon toward Lima thought about how very far from this place I'd been for so very long.

And then I started wondering.

I wondered if anyone ever started a new glee club at our high school. I wondered if Principle Figgins and Coach Sylvester and Ms. Pillsbury were still teaching there. I wondered how the kids there feel about going to school in a place where so many people died.

It'd been a long time since I'd let myself think about that place. I thought about the people who died there all the time, but I tried my best not to think about William McKinley high school. I couldn't remember the school without remembering the last time I stepped foot inside of it, and I couldn't remember that day without feeling like my blood was boiling inside of my skin and my brain was strangling itself inside of my skull.

Blaine went silently to his and Kurt's bed at the end of the RV and closed the curtain separating it from our view. After a pause, Kurt followed him. Rachel looked at me for a moment, and then she disappeared into her bed above me.

There are some feelings you just can't talk about, even when everyone around you is feeling the same thing.


	17. I Feel Everything

**Chapter Seventeen: I Feel Everything**

Rachel's parents, Kurt's dad, and my mom were all meeting us for dinner in Colombus before staying the night in a hotel and coming to the meetup and our show the next day.

The thought of being physically present in my mother's company again was embarrassingly emotional. I was barely keeping it together as we walked to the restaurant, and I know that Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine could tell, because they kept exchanging smiles and giving me affectionate looks.

Mom and I had always been close. My dad died when I was a baby, and she had her heart broken by several men in the years that followed. We'd never had much money, and she'd always had to work hard. But no matter how tough stuff got, we always stuck together. Mom was my rock. When I left to see all 1001 places I had to see before I died, I started vlogging so that she'd be included in my life. She and I always spoke via Skype several times a week no matter where I was. For a long time, she was the only one from home that I was in contact with.

Over the years, we'd talked many times about her flying out and meeting me somewhere, or me flying home for a weekend to see her, but we'd always agreed that I had to be independent and finish my journey on my own. Mom understood what I was doing. She'd never pressured me to come home or made me feel guilty for abandoning her. We were still as close as we'd been when I was a kid.

Still, there's nothing quite as special as a real-life hug from your mom, and I hadn't had that in years. When we walked up to the restaurant and saw her and Burt standing outside waiting for us, the tears started flowing immediately. She and I buried ourselves in each other's arms and I have no idea how much time passed before she put her hands on my shoulder and took a small step backward so that she could get a good look at me.

Kurt, Blaine, Rachel and Burt went inside to get us a table while she and I composed ourselves.

There was really nothing for either of us to say that we couldn't already feel, so we just hugged and laughed and cried and looked at each other until the emotions calmed down.

"Mmm I missed that hug," she whispered, "I love you, Finn."

"I love you too, Mom."

We went into the restaurant, and Burt attacked me for a hug too.

Burt was a great guy; quiet and intelligent and incredibly hardworking; a blue-collar man who cared so deeply that he earned a seat in Congress and fought hard for the world his son would grow up in. Burt and Mom had gotten married when I was seventeen, and anyone could see that if anyone deserved my mom, it was Burt. He'd come into my life at a time in my life when I really needed a dad, and he'd filled the role in ways I don't know how to express gratitude for.

Rachel's parents arrived not long after we got seated at a table, and she beamed widely, squealing and approaching them with a hug. They greeted me warmly too, welcoming me home. I was surprised at how intimidated I still was of them. They were a gay couple called Hiram and Leroy who used to terrify me when I was in high school. Most teenage boys fear their girlfriend's father. My girlfriend had two fathers. There was twice as much to fear.

"We have gifts!" Burt declared, once we'd all finally taken our seats, "Gifts in honor of all of the wonderful things we have to celebrate. Are you ready?"

I thought about our tiny RV and wondered what the gifts could possibly be.

"First of all," said Burt, "For all four of you, from all four of us. To celebrate the success of your show. We've been reading great things about it."

He put an envelope on the table. Kurt reached for it and pulled out a slip of paper. He grinned. "Fantastic, Dad. Thank you."

He showed me, Rachel and Blaine what it was: a gift certificate for a hotel suite in Columbus. Rachel shrieked with excitement and leapt up to hug and kiss her dads.

"We figured you could all use some of your own space," Carole said, grinning at Kurt.

Kurt hugged my mom, and from across the table, I watched Blaine and Burt exchange a quiet conversation, laughing quietly about some private joke.

Hiram said, "It breaks my time every time I think about our Rachel living in that tin can on wheels."

Nodding LeRoy said, "I don't know _how_ you boys have convinced her to do it."

It wasn't hard to see why Rachel was such a diva when you saw how her dads spoiled her. I'd always thought that she could have been a lot less high-maintenance if her dad's didn't always act like it was her birthright to have the best in life at all times.

Burt said, "Well, I never thought I'd see the day anyone could convince Kurt to spend a summer camping either, so I guess they're all really growing up."

"Ug," Kurt said, turning up his nose, "It's not _camping,_ Dad. It's a theatre tour."

As if the theatre aspect added enough culture to our adventures that it was still a classy enough lifestyle to meet Kurt's standards.

Carole said, "Well, I'm sure Finn's giving them all some tips on how to cope with the close quarters. Still, you kids deserve a little bit of luxury. You'll like the suite. Two bedrooms, a living room with a pull-out couch, a full kitchen, a hot tub…"

"Wow," I said, mind buckling a little at the thought. "Wow."

Everyone laughed at my reaction, and my mom gave me another big hug.

"And secondly…" Burt pulled out another envelope. "For our lovebirds here, to celebrate their engagement. Kurt and Blaine… we've all always known you two were meant for each other for always. I'm glad you're ready to make it official."

He passed them the envelope, and gave Kurt this look of pure fatherly pride that made me want to cry. I know how hard it could have been for a man like Burt to accept having a gay son, but I'd never seen him be anything but supportive. The excitement and joy he showed for Kurt's engagement was so authentic it almost hurt.

Kurt and Blaine didn't tell Rachel and I what was inside the envelope, but they both gave Burt, my mom, LeRoy, and Hiram long hugs.

"Next is for Blaine," Burt said, "In honour of his graduation from Juilliard. I'm _so_ proud of you, buddy. Summa cum laude. Incredible. Congratulations."

Blaine gave a charmingly sheepish smile and thanked Burt, accepting the envelope. He laughed when he opened it.

"Perfect. You know me well," he said, showing us the Starbucks gift card inside. He gave Burt another long hug, and when he pulled away to hug my mom too, there were tears in his eyes.

I wondered very suddenly why it hadn't occurred to me sooner to wonder where Blaine's own parents were.

"So what the plan next, Blaine?" asked Hiram, "What does the future hold for our young prodigy?"

Blaine casually brushed the tears off of his cheeks and said in the same suave, composed tone as he always had, "Grad school, of course," he said, "What else?"

This was news to me. I'd thought that Blaine would want to keep pursuing indie musicals, or try to get _Soundtrack_ produced on a larger scale. Why a guy with so much ability and opportunities would tie himself down with excessive education was beyond me.

Well, said LeRoy, "Good for you, Blaine."

Blaine grinned in the charming way he always grinned when he was the centre of attention receiving praise. I got that same sensation of disbelief and incomprehension that I always did when I tried to wrap my head around the fact that Blaine was a seriously gifted composer. The guy was still a complete enigma to me.

Burt patted Blaine on the shoulder again, and it occurred to me that Blaine was closer to my stepfather than I was. This shouldn't have bothered me, since it was my own doing that Burt and I weren't as close as we'd been when I was seventeen, but somehow I resented their relationship. It had meant a lot to me when Burt had taken me in as his own. The fact that he seemed to have done the same with Blaine somehow made it seem less special.

I was being a selfish asshole and I knew it.

"And finally," Burt said, "We've got something for Finn, in honor of his long-awaited return to Ohio."

He passed me the final envelope from his pile. "Oh," I said, feeling myself blush, "That's not necessary. I'm just passing through."

All I ever did was pass through from place to place.

"Nonetheless," said Mom, "We've got something for you.."

Now I felt tears in my own eyes, and I accepted the envelope from Burt. I opened it to find a slip of paper with a YouTube URL on it.

"You've been making videos for us for years," Mom said, "So we decided to make one for you. You can watch it later, okay?"

I nodded. "Wow. Thank you. That's really cool, Mom."

She kissed my hand. "_You're_ really cool. Now let's look at our menus before they kick us out."

We spent hours in the restaurant as we shared stories about the tour so far. Blaine and Kurt shared plans for their wedding. Kurt told his dad about the shows he'd been designing for, and all of the Broadway superstars he'd brushed shoulders with. Blaine talked about the theme he'd composed for a new show on ABC and the masters programs he'd been applying for. Rachel shared stories about the casting directors she'd been reading for, the play workshops she'd worked on, the waitressing job she'd been forced to take, and they all shared stories about the rehearsal process for _Soundtrack, _I told them behind-the-scenes details about my vlogs and my travels, and our parents shared stories about Lima that made us all feel prickly and strange.

Then, as we walked back to the RV, I realized that I'd learned more about the lives of my friends from that one conversation with our parents than I'd learned for the entire two weeks that we'd been on the road.

Rachel and I had had some emotional heart-to-hearts, but we hadn't just relaxed and talked casually about our lives and our ideas. I'd had no idea how hard she'd been working in New York to make it as an actress. I hadn't considered that to her, this tour was a vacation from the daily grind of waitressing, auditions, and taking classes to improve her already perfect technique.

I didn't know a fucking thing about her life.

And since I'd been back I'd talked with Kurt and Blaine about _Soundtrack_ and about our meetups and about marketing strategy for their theatre troupe, but I knew so little about who those boys had grown up to be that it made me feel ashamed when I heard them talking at dinner about it all.

Blaine Anderson was a complete stranger to me, and the more I heard him talk, the more apparent that become. Whoever I thought he'd been in high school had clearly been a lie derived from jealousy and a preoccupation with my own drama. Whoever I'd assumed he'd become after the shooting had clearly been a misguided construct built from an overdose of pop culture and a lot of guilt and self-pity. I didn't have a clue who he really was.

And my own stepbrother Kurt had this whole crazy life in the theatre business that I couldn't even begin to comprehend. He was a grown man who was planning a wedding and a future, and I didn't know a thing about it.

They knew everything about my life because they watched my vlogs. I knew nothing about them, and I hadn't even tried to change it.

In a way, I think that our shared tragic past had created a huge chasm of awkwardness that had prevented me from just relaxing and being friends with the only friends I really had.

I'd shown up and just started over as if the last five years of our lives had never happened. It was no wonder Rachel had called things off.

I was starting to wonder what kind of fucked up knots were tied in my personality that had made it so impossible just to be a human and have human relationships with people.

And I was still wondering all about this as I walked back to the RV I was sharing with these strangers. We'd decided to wait until the next night to use our hotel gift certificate, so I let them all go inside while I lay down on the grass between some trees beside our camping space and watched the YouTube video that Mom and Burt had made for me.

"Hi Finn!" said my mom to the shaky camera that was clearly being held by Burt, "We thought we'd give you a day in our lives the way you've been giving us every day of yours."

I started tearing up the moment I saw the inside of the house, and I legitimately started crying the moment my mom filmed her walk to work down the road I used to walk down every day to get to school.

When Burt filmed his normal everyday life at the garage where he taught me to be a man, I began to sob. And as I watched them go about their day; working, shopping, meeting with friends, driving around Lima, making dinner in their house, I realized that they were so very average and so very happy with what they had. I thought about how hard I'd been fighting to live a far-from-average life, and I couldn't stop crying.

At the end, my mom said, "Finn, it gives me so much joy to know that the son I raised has been to so many corners of the earth. It gives me even more joy to know that you've somehow found his way home. You are truly remarkable, Finn. I am so proud of what you've chosen to do with the life I gave you. You have matured in ways I didn't know if you could."

She paused, wiping tears off of her cheeks. She said, "The way you speak about life and time and values and perspective has made me reconsider a lot of my choices. Not many mothers can say that their sons have taught them things, but you have taught me a lot about life the way you have through all of your courageous and inspiring journeys. I know that being back in the States is probably going to be confusing and bring up some difficult memories and conflicting questions, but I know in my heart that your _Peregrination_ was worth every second. Don't you dare forget it, and don't you dare give up on any of it. I love you, Finn."

I was lying there, under the trees, face dripping with my own tears, and I suddenly realized how many steps backward I'd taken since I'd returned to the States. I'd started questioning my choices and I'd started forming regrets, and I'd forgotten what my mom was imploring me not to forget.

I couldn't stop crying.

I felt motion beside me, and I opened my eyes to see Kurt lowering himself to the ground beside me.

"Hey," he whispered, "You okay?"

I didn't look at him; I stared at the sky and couldn't figure out how to answer.

"Do you want to talk?" he asked, passing me a pack of tissues.

I wiped the tears off of my face and shrugged, trying to stop sobbing long enough to find words.

He stayed beside me saying nothing as I slowly regained my composure. "I'm sorry," I said finally, awkwardly.

"It's fine, Finn. In fact it's _good." _

I laughed weakly, sitting up and leaning against a tree. "Good?"

He sat up and sat facing me. "Yeah," he said apologetically, "I didn't know if you ever made room for the hard stuff in that shiny, optimistic philosophy that you build your world around."

I laughed. "Is that really how I come across?"

Kurt shrugged, tilting his head ever so slightly in thought. "No," he admitted, "I guess not. In your vlogs, you're always very deliberate about acknowledging the good and the bad. You just never seem to really let yourself _feel_ the bad stuff."

I laughed again. "Oh Kurt," I said, "I feel everything. Everything."

After a short, contemplative pause, Kurt asked, "You do?"

I said, "Kurt, I vlog in the aftermath of feelings. I vlog about the lessons I learn from the feelings. That doesn't mean that the feelings themselves don't sometimes completely fuck me up. You've got to remember that _I'm_ not my vlog."

He paused again, and I finally looked him in the eye. He said, "You're right. I'm sorry. Do you want to talk about what's upsetting you?"

I looked at Kurt; he looked like a stranger with his adult face and his adult hairstyle and his adult eyes. I said, "It's hard to explain. I'm just confused and emotional. Somehow being this close to home makes me feel farther away than I ever have."

He frowned, saying nothing.

I said, "You know, I think I spent so much time trying to heal from losing… the people we lost… that I didn't notice how much it was hurting me to lose all of you guys in the process."

His face crumpled a little bit with emotion. "You never lost us, Finn. We're still here."

I said, "I know. And I'm not going to apologize for leaving, even though I know that I hurt a lot of people for doing it. I can't regret what I did, because what I did made me who I am, and I _like_ who I am."

He raised his eyebrows. I said, "No, I'm not going to apologize. But I am trying to mend what I broke. And it's confusing as fuck."

Kurt nodded slowly. "Okay. Okay. You know, Finn, most of the time I can't find any similarities between you and the guy you were in high school. Maybe you're confused because you're trying to mend something that doesn't exist anymore."

I shiver a little. "Do you really think I've changed that much?"

"Yes," he said, "You have. And you're right; you shouldn't apologize for it. You've been living a life that the old Finn couldn't even dream of. Somehow you've got to figure out how to be your new self around your old friends."

"When none of you are the same as you were before either," I nodded, "Yeah. I know."

There was another pause, and he said, "I don't think any of us were expecting your return to be so… emotional."

"Yeah," I said, "It's emotional alright."

"Yeah. Very. We thought we'd lost you, you know? And now you're back."

I said, "And does it remind you of all of the people we're never going to get back? Because that's how it feels for me."

"Yep," said Kurt, "That's exactly how it feels."

I sighed, "You know, I still don't know anything about what happened after I left. I mean, I followed the news articles about Kent Irving, and my mom told me about the school reopening and stuff, but as far as what happened with Blaine and Tina and all of the old glee kids… I mean, I know how I came to terms with it, but here I am back with you guys, and I have no idea what your journey was, except that you went though it together, without me. And it makes me feel like an intruder."

Shrugging, Kurt said, "And you are an intruder in a lot of ways. We can't _tell _you what our journey was. You weren't here. You can't understand. You can't expect to. That's just something you're going to have to get used to."

I nodded, feeling a lump rise at the back of my throat like I'm going to start crying again. "I'm trying," I said. "Somehow I just have to figure out how to keep moving forward with my life when everything about being with you guys seems to be pulling me backwards."

"Well," Kurt said, "I'll try to help you. Honestly, it's a relief to hear you say these things. I mean… I'm sorry that you're upset, but I really didn't know if this was as hard for you as it was for me. You seem so… organized and straightforward and happy."

"I try to be," I shrugged. "Some days are just harder."

He nodded. "And can I ask you about Rachel?"

"What about her?"

"You tell me. What's going on between you two?"

"Nothing," I said honestly. "We're just trying to figure out what we mean to each other. We're just trying to get to know each other again."

He raised an eyebrow dubiously. "So you're not… you know… sleeping together or anything?"

"Look," I said, "I'm not going to tell you that we're just friends. I think it's pretty obvious that Rachel and I can never be friends. We love each other. But for now, no. We're not sleeping together. We're hands off. Lips off."

He laughed. "Okay. Well, I'm hope you guys can figure it out. I've watched her half-heart her way through relationships for years. You've got to give her closer one way or another."

Nodding, I said, "I know. I'm working on it."

We're both quiet for a minute. I ask, "Can I ask _you_ something?"

"Hmm?" he asked, sleepy.

"Where are Blaine's parents?"

Kurt looked surprised. "Oh," he said, "In Ecuador, I think."

"Ecuador? What are they doing in Ecuador?"

Shrugging, Kurt said, "No idea. Chilling on the beach? Golfing? I've never met them. I don't know."

I felt bad for Blaine, and I think Kurt could tell. "Look, they're wealthy, retired, and not particularly interested in anything but enjoying their wealth and retirement. Blaine gets enough love from other places to make up for it."

I could hear the defensiveness in his tone, as though he were forbidding me from feeling sorry from his fiancé.

"Alright," I said, "Fair enough."

Kurt said, "Anyway, we should both get some sleep. Just… you know, Finn, you don't have to be embarrassed about who you've become just because we know who you used to be. Just be yourself. Talk to us. Enjoy this tour the way you endeavor to enjoy everything. Alright?"

Nodding quickly, I said, "Yeah. Yeah of course. I am enjoying myself. Just because it's hard and confusing doesn't mean it's not worth it. Tonight just overwhelmed me, I guess."


	18. This Laughter is Ours

**Chapter Eighteen: This Laughter is Ours**

After my talk with Kurt under the stars and a long talk with my mom after the meetup the next day, I started to feel like myself again. We all spent a night of luxury at the hotel in Columbus, enjoying space to ourselves and comfortable beds. When we got back in the RV to head to Indianapolis, I felt silly about my breakdown and all of the unnecessary stressing out I'd been doing over the past week. I was steady in my resolve to stop overthinking things and start enjoying the company of my friends.

Kurt, Blaine, Rachel, and I decided to chill out at our campsite. I started a campfire and Blaine got out his guitar and we sat around talking.

"Wow," said Kurt, "This is so rustic. If only my dad could see me now."

Blaine laughed. "It's a campfire in a grate on a gravel pad in a field on the outskirts of Indianapolis, Kurt. If this is as rustic as we get, I can deal with it."

I laughed, putting another log onto the fire. Blaine strummed quietly on his guitar.

He said, "You know, I'm kind of afraid that I'm going to get rusty now that I don't have the insane demands of Juilliard to keep me on my toes."

"Good," Kurt said, teasing, "Then maybe you can stop showing everyone else up."

Blaine stuck out his tongue, and Rachel said, "Blaine, God knows your brain never stops building new songs. You couldn't get rusty if you tried."

Grinning, Blaine shrugged and said, "Fair enough. Anyway, listen to this…"

The music he played for us was very different than the music he'd written for _Soundtrack_. _Soundtrack_'s music was poppy and high-energy, but what he played for us was rhythmic, mellow, and bluesy. I was impressed.

"Do you ever play concerts?" I asked him.

"Yeah, there were performance requirements for my degree at Juilliard."

I asked, "But other than that?"

He shrugged. "Not really, no."

Blaine was a confident and charismatic performer with a great voice. I had a feeling that he could be pretty successful as a singer/songwriter if he set his mind to it.

"Well have you ever recorded and EP or anything? I think people would buy it."

Blaine said, "I'm not really interested in all that. I prefer writing music that fits into a larger piece of art. Like a musical, or a movie."

"Really? You're such a great performer though."

He shrugs. "Maybe, but it's not really my passion. I'd rather spend a hundred hours alone with my piano and a pen and paper than a single minute up on a stage. To be honest, if we'd have had the budget to hire a different actor, I wouldn't even be performing in _Soundtrack_."

Kurt grinned and rolled his eyes. Rachel said, "He says that, but I know he loves the spotlight."

I said, "Well, I guess if you'd wanted to be a performer, you'd have studied performance."

Blaine said, "Right. It's not that I don't like to perform, it's just that I love composing more."

Kurt said, "It's all his brain is wired for. He sees math equations and hears what their theme song should be."

Blaine laughed, putting down his guitar. "True story."

I smiled. "So what about you, Kurt? Do you prefer designing costumes to performing?"

Kurt grimaced. "Don't ask me that," he said, "I can never decide."

Blaine patted Kurt on the shoulder, smiling quietly.

I asked, "Well, you still audition for stuff, right? Mom said you did a play last winter."

Kurt nodded. "I have an agent. I've done some acting in New York. It's just tough to justify taking off-Broadway chorus roles when I've got Tony award-winning producers knocking on my door for costume designs."

"Yeah," I nodded, "No kidding."

Blaine said, "He's going to win his own Tony for his designs pretty damn soon."

Kurt laughed. "Could be. But I must say, I'm really enjoying the chance to be on stage again on this tour. I'm glad you convinced me to take the time off designing to come do it."

Blaine grinned and leaned in to kiss his fiancé. I raised my eyebrows and stoked the fire when the kiss lasted longer than I expected.

I wondered just how starved for privacy those guy could possibly be when they'd had a private room in our hotel suite the night before.

A draft of breeze hit them both with a face full of campfire smoke just as they came up for air from their kiss, and they pulled away from each other, sputtering.

I laughed. They both picked up their chairs and moved to the other side of the fire, Blaine coughing and Kurt tugging at his shirt as though he could shake the smoke out of the fabric.

"Our clothes are going to reek of campfire," Kurt groaned, "And who knows how soon we can get to a Laundromat."

Kurt hadn't been coping well with how limited his wardrobe choices were on this trip.

"We'll be in Chicago tomorrow," I told him, "We'll find something."

He brightened a little. "Right," he said, "I'll bet Mike and Tina will let us use their building's laundry room."

Blaine said, "They have in-suite laundry." He coughed again in a short, rattling burst and added, "I stayed with the when I was in Chicago in March, remember?"

"Oh yeah," Kurt grinned, "I should call them. I completely lost track of where we were going next. Chicago's tomorrow already?"

"Yep," I said, "We've got two shows in Chicago. Then we're on to Madison, Wisconsin."

Nodding, Kurt said, "Ah yes. Our first double-show day. Should be interesting." He put his hand on Blaine' shoulder with a small smile as Blaine kept coughing.

Blaine rolled his eyes and gave a sheepish grin. He thumped his palm on his chest, straightening his spine a little. "There we go," he said, as the coughing seemed to relent. "Yikes."

Kurt laughed. "Quit smoking," he advised.

When Blaine and Rachel burst out laughing at this comment, I got the feeling it was an inside joke. I didn't think that Blaine had never smoked in his life.

"Fuck," Blaine gasped, as the laughter set him coughing again, "Oh _Jesus_."

The pitch of his coughs was changing, growing whistling and shallow.

The laughter faded slightly from Kurt's face. "Aw, sweetie," he said. "You gunna live?"

Blaine made a face. His shoulders were hunching up and between coughs his breath came in wheezy rasps. "Fuck," he said again, standing up and stretching his arms above his head.

He seemed more frustrated than concerned, so I pushed back my own instinct to panic.

Kurt asked, "Did you pack an inhaler anywhere?"

Blaine nodded. "I think so."

He went into the RV, still coughing.

"Asthma?" I asked, surprised.

Kurt nodded and went after Blaine into the RV.

"I didn't know he was asthmatic," I said.

Rachel said, "I don't think it's very severe. He does tend to cough a lot when the smog is bad in the city, and he gets wheezy sometimes when people smoke cigarettes near him, but this is about as bad as I've ever seen it get. "

I raised an eyebrow, "And yet you don't seem particularly concerned."

Shrugging, she said, "Blaine isn't the kind of person you have to be concerned about. He can take care of himself. If he needs help, he'll ask for it. Plus, Kurt's with him."

"Kurt seems worried," I pointed out.

"Kurt just doesn't like to see him sick," she said, "Compassion and worry are two different things."

I still felt anxious, and she could tell. "Look, you don't know Blaine very well, do you? Trust me, if he's got a problem he can deal with on his own, he's not going to include anyone in it. But he's smart enough to know to ask for help when he needs it. And Kurt's almost always the one he asks. "

She seemed so sure of this answer that I was sure there must be more to the story. "Alright…" I said.

Laughing a little, she said, "I only say this because I know how easy it can be to worry about him, after what he's been through. Anyone else would deserve the concern, but Blaine's tougher than that. After watching him fight through PTSD and half a dozen shoulder surgeries like a champ, I trust him to know what he needs. It's like his anxiety thing after performing; if we're trying to pull him somewhere and he needs to take a moment to calm down, he tells us. If he can deal with it without us noticing, he won't."

I felt a little swelling of pride; both for Blaine's resilience and for Rachel's ability to recognise it.

"Plus," Rachel said, "He tends to get pretty embarrassed if he thinks people are feeling sorry for him."

I nodded. "Fair enough."

Kurt and Blaine were in the RV for fifteen minutes, and when they came back, Blaine did seem a little embarrassed, but his breathing sounded fine.

"So now that that's out of the way…" he picked up his guitar. He said, "I need some guinea pigs. Can I borrow your voices?"

Kurt and Rachel nodded like this was the most natural thing for someone to ask. I raised my eyebrows. "What?"

He said, "I've got a thing I want to hear. I need four voices."

"A thing?"

Kurt laughed and said, "Just go with it, Finn."

Nodding, Blaine said, "Yeah. Okay listen, Rach—" he plucked a few strings on his guitar and sang some notes. She parroted it back to him and he grinned.

"Perfect. Yeah. But in the next octave." She nodded and sang it back higher.

"Right," he said. "Then—" he sang her another phrase, which she repeated back.

"Good. And Kurt—" he taught Kurt a melody too.

"Yeah. And together—"

They sang it together, and the harmonies were perfect. "And Finn. Here—"

I was self-conscious as I sang the notes he gave me. It'd been a very long time since I'd used my singing voice outside of the shower. Blaine corrected my pitch and I tried again until I was singing it right.

When he put Rachel, Kurt, and me together to sing, I got shivers down my spine. I'd forgotten how great it felt to sing in harmony with other singers. Blaine said, "Good. Now I'll join."

Our four voices blended together and the effect was haunting. Blaine said. "Great… now the words…"

He sang the words to us:

"Tell us this laughter of ours

Belongs to us

We're gunna laugh all night 'till our joy outshines our fears

And this laughter of ours

Is all our own

Nobody out there's gunna steal it from our souls."

We repeated after him and he joined in on his guitar. We sing through the chorus several times. It's pulsing and melodic and sends shivers down my spine.

"Okay," he said. "Now verses. Join for chorus."

He started with his voice alone, soulful and whole, a captivating and simple melody with sweet and simple lyrics. We join in for the chorus, and the effect is extremely powerful. He adds the guitar for the second verse and second chorus, and gets us all to clap on the downbeats for the third. The song crescendos to a close and we all cheer.

"Gorgeous, Blaine," said Rachel, "What's it for?"

Blaine grinned mysteriously and said, "I'm not sure yet."

I said, "Well, that sounded too good not to share with the world. How would you feel about recording it for your YouTube channel? Or are you saving it for some other project?"

"Nah," Blaine said, "You're right. We sounded awesome. RattleBingBang deserves a new upload, don't you think?"

Rachel said, "Absolutely."

So I set up my camera, and we sang it again. And fuck, it felt good.


	19. Familiar Strangers

**Chapter Nineteen: Familiar Strangers **

Our next stop was Chicago, where yet another reunion was scheduled to take place. Our high school friends Mike and Tina lived there.

"So, what's the story with Mike and Tina anyway?" I asked as we reached the city limits of Chicago, "I know this makes me an asshole, but the last time I talked to either of them, they were broken up."

The last time I saw Tina, she'd been hysterical, screaming, and soaked in Artie Abrams' blood, getting dragged out of our high school by a police officer. She hadn't shown up to the funeral. That a was a month after Mike, who graduated with Kurt, Rachel and I, had broken off a two-year relationship with her because he was moving to Chicago, and she was staying in Lima for her senior year.

"It doesn't make you an asshole," Rachel laughed from behind the wheel, "But you do know they got married last summer, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah, but I only found out because I saw the wedding pictures on Facebook," I said.

Blaine said, "They'd actually decided to give long-distance a try the night before… uh… before the shooting. Afterward, she ran away to Chicago to stay with him for a lot of our senior year."

This surprised me, because I'd always imagined Blaine and Tina sticking together in everyone else' absence during their senior year.

"Yeah," Kurt said, "Just like you did in New York with me."

I raised my eyebrows. "But you both graduated from McKinley, didn't you?"

Blaine nodded, his spine straight and his eyes straight ahead on the road, as though talking about that part of his life was the second last thing he wanted to do, after admitting that he didn't want to talk about it. "Barely. Second semester we both did all of our courses through McKinley Online. I think they pity-passed us for most of them."

"But you still got into fucking _Juilliard_."

He said, "Admission to Juilliard was mostly dependent on the audition. All I needed was a high school diploma; grades weren't important."

"Oh," I said, swallowing. These revelations made me feel weird. "So neither of you were even in Ohio that year?"

Rachel shifted uncomfortably, but Blaine kept pretending my questions didn't bother him. He said, "We were for some of it. In the beginning, neither of our parents liked for us to be away for very long." He paused, eyes faraway as he remembered. "But after a while they figured out we_ needed_ to be gone. Still, we had to come back to go to court a lot." He touched his shoulder and added, "And I had a few surgeries in Lima."

I look at his shoulder too, remembering how he'd come out of the school that day, in such complete shock that he hadn't even noticed he'd been shot until he fainted from blood loss and I screamed for the paramedics.

I shuddered. Blaine noticed, and he smiled. "Yeah," he agreed, shuddering too.

Kurt and Rachel laughed nervously.

That was the first time that I'd heard Blaine mention the shooting. It was the first time the four of us had acknowledged it as a group, and it was kind of a powerful moment to have us all sit there and recognise our shared pain.

I said, "Okay. So they got back together years ago. They got married last summer. What are they doing in Chicago?"

"Mike's dancing with Joffre Ballet," Blaine answered promptly, "And Tina works for a children's arts foundation. I forget what it's called."

I was starting to wonder if I was the only person from our glee club who hadn't pursued the arts after high school.

We reached the apartment building where Mike and Tina lived, and Rachel parked the RV on the street. "It's number #204," she said as we approached the building.

We buzzed the number, and seconds later, two black-haired blurs came thundering down the stair and pelted out the door, embracing us all in one strange, squashed group hug.

The squealing and rapid chatter overwhelmed me for a moment, and then I felt the more direct embrace of Mike Chang. "Finn Hudson," he said, "Damn, it's good to see you."

Mike and I had grown up together, attending the same schools in the same classes and playing on the same sports teams, but we'd always been familiar strangers until we'd both joined glee club in our sophomore year. He was a shy, tentative kid who turned out to have a ton talent and passion once he found a community where he belonged. In glee club, we became family, and even though so much time had passed, when he hugged me again, we still felt like family.

"Wow," I said, "You too, Mike. I can't believe you're married. Congratulations."

He grinned and pulled Tina in close. They both looked almost exactly the same as they had in high school—so much that it disoriented me a little. "Tina!"

I hugged her and felt a little shiver of some unidentifiable emotion. I'd spent so much time in the choir room at McKinley with that girl, but I couldn't remember ever really having a conversation with her. She was talented and hardworking, but very shy and mostly overlooked. It made me feel like crap to think that it took surviving such a horrific tragedy for Tina to finally get some attention.

No wonder she'd run away to the one guy who'd always given her attention no matter what.

Mike and Tina lead us into their apartment, where Tina served us pasta while the conversation flowed easy.

"So how much money do you really make with the whole YouTube thing?" asked Mike, "I can't believe you've been able to travel the world for so long without ever having a job."

I grinned. "I don't need a lot of money. I get a lot of free stuff from companies who want me to promote them. Flights, hostels, phone service, etc. Sometimes I feel like a billboard, but it's an easy way to live the life I want to live. And I live a pretty frugal life."

Tilting his head, Mike said astutely, "Yeah, because that's what you're marketing. Frugal travel. You're the king of backpacking. But you must be able to afford more than you take advantage of."

Kurt and Rachel both looked very interested in hearing my response. Blaine didn't seem to be listening at all; he was staring longingly at the piano across the room.

I smiled slightly, "Well, I'm not really supposed to disclose my income with the Youtube partners program."

"Oh come on," said Tina, "You can tell us. We won't tell anyone."

I laughed. "Okay. Well, I get paid for the advertisements on the videos that I put up. The more times a page is viewed, the more I get paid. It amounts to something like a penny for every ten views."

"That's all? A fraction of a cent per view?" Tina looked shocked.

Mike said, "Well, that could add up, though. How many views do you get a day?"

I said, "It really depends. There's a core community of subscribers who watch every day as a source of entertainment and community. So within a day of posting a new video, I get around a hundred thousand views. Then there are all of the people who find my videos while searching for reviews for travel destinations. So my old videos are always being watched by people researching trips who have no idea what the larger story of my channel is."

Rachel said, "Just tell us the average, Finn."

I said, "Around a hundred thousand views a day, on average."

Tina's jaw dropped. "A hundred thousand a day?" She looked at Mike. "So for one cent per ten views, how much money does he make a day?"

Mike said, "A hundred dollars a day."

Kurt looked shocked. "A hundred a day? Seven days a week?"

Rachel said, "That's like three grand a month. _Fuck_, Finn, why're we slumming it in an RV?"

I grimaced. "It's not slumming it," I said, "We're paying more for that RV than I've ever paid for accommodation before."

Mike said, "Plus, he's got an online store a blog that's probably monetized too. See, Finn Hudson's way more financially successful than any of us."

Punching me playfully, Rachel said, "How could you let us live in squalor when you're pulling in that kind of money?"

I felt a little bit like I was being backed into a corner.

Kurt spoke up, "It's his money, Rachel. We wouldn't be able to tour at all if it weren't for him. He invested his equal share in the touring budget, and he's donating his tour managing services. Don't be a diva."

I added, "Besides, I reinvest most of my money in my business. You know, on cameras, editing software, service charges for the people who run my online store… it adds up."

Blaine said shrewdly, "Plus, he's got to have startup capital for whatever project he decides to try out after this tour ends. Right, Finn?"

I shrug. "I guess so."

Blaine stood up and asked, "Do you guys mind if I goof around on your piano? I've got something I want to hear."

"Go for it," Mike said, following Blaine into the next room, which seemed to be some kind of dance/music studio. Seconds later, we heard tentative, almost exploratory notes ring through the apartment.

Rolling his eyes, Kurt said, "Well, he's going to be a lost cause for hours. The muses have sucked him in. Do you guys want to go out somewhere?"

Tina laughed, "Yeah, we might as well. What do you think? Movies? Bowling? A pub? A club?"

Rachel said, "How about a spa? I need a freaking massage."

"Ugh, _yes_," said Kurt, "That sounds perfect."

Tina nodded, picking up her phone. "I've got a friend who works at Serenity. I'll see if she can fit us in."

I groaned. "Are you kidding?" I asked.

Rachel giggled. "What?" she asked, "I thought you were all about trying new things?"

"Yeah," said Kurt, "This'll be good for your vlog. You'll get lots of comments. Everyone will think you're going soft."

I laughed. "Challenge accepted. Let's go to a spa."


	20. So Familiar With Despair

**Chapter Twenty: So Familiar With Despair**

Mike stayed home with Blaine while I went with Tina, Rachel, and Kurt to get massages. The spa could only take two of us at a time, so Tina and I ended up sitting in the waiting area together while we awaited our turn.

It felt for a moment like it was going to be really awkward, given that her and I had never really been close, but somehow she turned out to extremely easy to talk to.

"So you're really back, huh?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Am I?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

Tina nodded, giving me a knowing, slightly cynical smile. "You're here, anyway."

I nodded.

"Any idea what you'll do next? More travelling?"

I said, "I don't know. I constantly get comments and emails telling me about all of the awesome places I haven't seen yet. There are a lot of places out there that weren't in the book Mr. Schue gave me."

"But you finished the book, didn't you? _1000 Places to See Before you Die_?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I've seen all of those places and more."

"And maybe it's time to start a new project?" Tina guessed.

Smiling a little, I said, "Yeah. I mean, maybe. My goal was to see all of the places in the book, but somewhere on that road, it became attached to something much bigger. There's a whole community of people out there who are invested in my life and my journey."

Tina nodded. "Right. So I guess you feel obligated to keep that community going."

Shaking my head, I said, "No, no. It's not an obligation. It's a privilege."

She rolled her eyes a little, but there was affection in her eyes. "Okay. So what are you going to do about it?"

I said, "Good question. I want to find a way for the community to become about the lifestyle and the ideas and not about me. That's what I'm doing with all of the meetups we've been holding. I'm trying to shift the attention off of myself and onto the connections they can build with each other and with the world."

Tina frowned a little, tilting her head and staring at me a little more intently. "Hmm," she said, "Maybe I should start watching your vlog. I didn't realize you were so… serious about it."

I smiled. It was somehow relieving to hear that not all of my old friends had been watching my vlogs for five years. "I mean, it's bigger than I am, you know? My vlogs are about aimlessness. A lot of people relate to that."

"Fair enough," said Tina.

I swallowed, compelled to explain myself further. I said, "But, I decided to call the aimlessness 'Peregrination,' and it became mindful aimlessness. Unapologetic aimlessness. And more importantly, it's contemplative aimlessness. My vlogs are about experiencing and looking for joy in whatever the world has to offer, no matter how pointless or hopeless it might seem. These are simple ideas, and they're certainly not original ideas, but a lot of people who live by those philosophies have chosen to rally around me."

She was now looking at me like I was a stranger. "Wow," she said quietly, "I think I really do need to start watching your vlog."

I said, "And there are two levels to it. The first is the backpacking culture and that whole world of low-cost world adventures. People who have nothing in common except having seen my videos are cooperating with each other to enable low-cost travel."

"How so?"

"In so many ways," I said, "Some of them volunteer to trade each other couches to crash on and tours of their home regions, some team up to generate income that they split to travel together, some team up to get better rates on group tours and stuff… But mostly they just trade recommendations and share their experiences."

She looked impressed. "And all of this in _your_ name."

"At the most basic level, yeah. They get inspired to travel by watching me, and they make relationships with each other through the fan sites, and then magical things start happening."

Tina shook her head. "Fuck," she said, "I had no idea. That's awesome. And the other level is?"

I said, "Well, it's not just about travel. It's about really experiencing the world, and taking the time to _feel_, and _understand_ those experiences. Every day, I edit together footage of all of the bits and pieces that make up my life. It forces me to remember, evaluate, and be grateful for those experiences. And I talk to my audience about the feelings and ideas that all of the pieces add up to. And that's important. The idea that the real die-hard Peregrination followers center their lives around is that we should all just get out there and live your life unapologetically, no matter how pointless or hopeless it might seem. And the reason my fans form such productive and profound relationships with each other is because it's the kind of philosophy that demands including other people in it."

She looked a little overwhelmed by my spiel, and I felt myself blushing. She probably thought that I'd lost my mind. I said, "I guess its hard to explain if you don't watch the vlogs and you haven't seen the stuff that the community does. Come to our meetup tomorrow. Maybe that'll make it clearer."

She reached up and swept her finger across her cheek under her eye, and after an oblivious pause, I realized that she was pushing tears away.

"Aw, Tina!" I said, startled, "What's wrong? Am I talking too much?"

She shook her head, blushing and hiding her face behind her hair. "I'm sorry," she said, "You're just making me so proud."

My heart melted a little, and I put my arm around her. "Tina, it's way bigger than me."

Shaking her head again, she said, "I understand that. But I'm not just proud of what you've accomplished. It's- it's who you've become. I never thought I'd be twenty-two years old and listening to Finn Hudson talk about feelings and ideas."

I smiled. "No," I said, "I guess I didn't think I'd ever be here. It's weird, isn't it? You and I-sitting here. After all of these years."

"I was thinking that too," she said. "We were in different grades and different social circles. Even when we were in glee together, we never really interacted. Yet if you hadn't visited when you were in Chicago, I would have been devastated."

I nodded. "Visiting you while we were here was just a given."

She said, "It feels like the same rules apply for New Directions alumni as apply for family. No matter how much time and distance separates us, we're always going to be part of each other's lives. And we're always going to care about each other. And we're always going to make room on our couches for each other when we're passing through each other's towns."

I felt tears in my own eyes. "Aw," I said, hugging her for real, "It's so true."

She smiled and looked at me with this tranquil, satisfied smile.

I asked, "So how've you been, Tina? I mean really?"

Smiling again, she said, "I've got a wonderful husband and a job I like getting out of bed to go to. At this point in my life, that's all I need. I'm very happy."

I believed her. "I'm glad," I said, "I've worried about you a lot."

She gave me a grateful, mildly overcome look. "Aw," she said, "That's really sweet of you. But life went on. I'm sure you understand that better than anyone, with all you've done. You have to enjoy what you have and strive for what you could have, no matter how much it hurts."

I ask, "Do you ever feel like you have a duty to live a fuller, bigger life than you would have? Like… like you have to live for them too, because they won't get the chance?"

Tina brushed more tears off of her face. "Mike and I talk about that sometimes. He thinks it's survivor's guilt, but I don't think so. I think we just value joy more highly now that we're so familiar with despair."

I blinked. "Wow," I said, "Yeah, that's a good way to put it."

She nodded. Then it was time for our massages.


	21. Wasn't Supposed To Be

**Chapter Twenty-One: Wasn't Supposed To Be**

It's not like I'd never had a massage before; I'd tried all kinds of exotic spa treatments over the years in various attempts to include myself in new cultures. The day spa in Chicago was pretty boring after some of the crazy, half-understood things I'd let people do to my body over the years. I lay on the table and enjoyed my massage while I let my mind wander.

When Rachel, Kurt, Tina, and I returned to Tina and Mike's apartment, thunderously enthusiastic piano music was filling the air. I recognised Blaine's talent in the melody instantly.

We followed the sounds into the next room. Blaine was behind the piano, face radiant with excitement as he played and Mike danced on the floor before him.

"Yeah," Blaine said, hands still sweeping across the piano in a swelling crescendo, "Exactly. And then…"

The music thundered to a peak and then backed off, and Mike's body flew across the room in haunting and perfect motions with the sound.

Blaine's fingers left the key and he clapped, bouncing with excitement. "Ahh! It's so perfect!" he said, and leaping away from the piano to join Mike on the dance flood. "It's great. And yeah…" He hummed a few bars and Mike responded immediately with movement, which Blaine mirrored with considerably less skill.

"Yeah!" Mike's grin was as big as Blaine's. "Yeah."

I glanced at Tina, Rachel and Kurt, who looked just as confused by this interaction as all I did.

Blaine turned away from Mike with a distinct mania in his eyes, skipping a little and humming some more. We stepped further into the room to reveal our presence.

"What were you guys working on?" asked Tina, kissing Mike on the lips and taking her place by his side.

Mike glanced at Blaine, who could barely return his secretive expression for all of the energy that seemed to be bouncing through his body.

Laughing, Mike said, "It's hard to explain."

Blaine said, "Something epic. We'll have to just show you."

He practically skipped back to the piano, vibrating with excitement, and Mike raised his hands in preparation to dance. Kurt, Rachel, Tina and I quickly cleared out of his way. I raised my camera, got both of them in frame, pressed play, and waited.

Blaine started playing, and at first I was too impressed by how quickly his hands were prancing across the piano to even hear the music or notice Mike's movement.

But then I heard Rachel's gasp of awe, and I suddenly tuned in to the absolute art occurring in the room with me. I quickly looked down at my camera to make sure I was capturing it all.

It's hard to use language to describe the art of music and dance, but if you can visualize a each chord of a song as carefully strategized weapon wielded against a dancer, you might get a taste for what was happening before me. It was violent and courageous and disturbing and inspiring all at once, and I could see what had Mike and Blaine so excited.

When it ended, nobody said a word or made a movement for several moments; we all just stared into reality and considered how much it had improved now that we'd experienced the art that had just occurred.

And then Blaine leapt to his feet again in more excitement as Kurt, Tina, Rachel, and I all started raving our praise and moved together to hug each other. I had some unbelievably talented friends. It wasn't even fair how talented they were.

"I don't even know what that was supposed to be," Tina said, kissing Mike and brushing tears off of her face, "But I haven't been so moved by you dancing since… probably ever. Look. I have goosebumps."

Kurt kissed Blaine more passionately than I'd seen them kiss before, and he whispered something in his ear that made tears well up in Blaine's eyes.

I just stood next to Rachel, and we exchanged wordless glances of awe.

"It's just a random thing," said Blaine, "But so much fun. Mike, we need to collaborate more often."

Nodding, Mike said, "Absolutely. We should do a show. Maybe this winter, when I'm on vacation from Joffre."

Blaine nodded enthusiastically, but didn't seem to really register what Mike was saying. He turned to me and asked, "Finn, you got that on video, right?"

"Yeah," I said, "You should upload it to RattleBingBang."

Mike said, "Yeah, totally upload it. See if anyone else is crazy enough to love it."

"They will," Blaine said confidently, "It's awesome." He turned suddenly to Rachel and said, "We've got a hundred thousand views on that song we did by the campfire in Indiana."

Grinning, Rachel said, "I know-"

But Blaine cut her off before she could say anything else. "Finn, can I see the video? Or do you think we should shoot it again? Did you get it all in frame?"  
I said, "I'll show you."

He stood beside me as I played back the video, and I could hear his halted, rapid breaths in my ear. He couldn't stand still, and it was starting to concern me.

Halfway through the video, he nodded and stepped away with a little bouncing bound. "Yeah yeah," he said, ""It's good. I think it's fine just like that. Because you  
get the added reaction… of you behind the camera being like… holy shit this is good. You can practically sense that you're thinking it… just from how you're filming… Jesus fucking Christ… I can't breathe."

He swayed a little on the spot, hyperventilating.

Before I even had a chance to start panicking, Tina took him by the hand. "Okay, Blaine. Let's go for a walk."

I was surprised by how willingly Blaine followed her. I waited Kurt to go after them, but he watched them wordlessly, offering no support.

"Is he okay?" I asked, "I've never seen him so… frenzied."

Rachel said, "It's an anxiety attack."

Kurt added. "He always gets like that when he's trying not to be sad. Tina knows how to calm him down."

Mike said, "I guess I should have noticed how wound up he was getting."

Shrugging, Kurt said, "He's an adult. You don't have to look out for him."

Rachel said, "Your dance was seriously inspiring, though."

Mike nodded. "That's all on Blaine. The way his mind processes music… I mean, he's insane. That's the only explanation. It's incredible to watch him compose."

Grinning proudly, Kurt said, "He's not insane. He's just unique. Have you ever heard of synesthesia?"

Shaking his head, Mike said, "Synesthesia? No."

Kurt explained, "Blaine's therapist thinks that synesthesia is a big part of what makes Blaine such a great composer. His brain connects sound to meanings much deeper than anyone else. Each note has a personality and a color and a spatial position. His songs are more than songs; they're conversations—love affairs—arguments—between the notes that make them up."

None of us responded to this for a moment. "Wow," I said finally, "That's a cool way of looking at it."

"It's not a way of looking at it," Kurt said, "It's Blaine's reality. You or I could arbitrarily assign traits to notes and try to keep track of them as we made music, but it would be so much work we'd get overwhelmed trying to tell a story and make good music at the same time. For Blaine it's just instinct. The notes are his friends; he cannot separate the characters from the music. It's a documented brain phenomenon: synesthesia."

Rachel nodded, "And he thought he was crazy because of it for a long time."

Mike said, "As I watched him compose that song, I thought he was insane. He just…"

"I know," Kurt said, "He loses himself in it. He becomes it."

"Exactly," said Mike.

"And of course, when he's already in that manic headspace he gets in when he's avoiding emotions… let's just say I'm not surprised he created something epic today."

"But why is he so manic today?" I asked.

Kurt sighed. "Because of Tina."

Nodding, Mike said, "It's the same reason that Tina's been on the verge of tears all day."

I didn't really know how to respond to this.

"If you try to understand the relationship that those two have, you'll lose your mind," said Kurt. "They get all fucked up every time they're around each other. If you're in a room with the two of them, you'll never hear then talk to each other or see them even make eye contact. But then they go off alone together and you don't see them for hours. Sometimes Blaine locks himself in the bathroom all night just so that he can whisper to her on the phone. And sometimes they jump on planes and disappear together for days anyway. And they can never explain why."

Mike nodded. "At some point, Kurt and I just realized that we could never provide them what they can provide each other. There's no way to understand the hell those two went through together. You just have to let them do their thing."

Rachel added, "Here's hoping they come back before our show tomorrow."

Here was the real evidence of the real damage that had been done. I'd expected Tina and Blaine to be so much more fucked up than they'd been acting. Learning about their bizarre relationship was comforting. I wasn't the only one who had broken pieces I couldn't repair. Tina and Blaine had more right than any of us to be a little bit insane, and I was glad that they took advantage of it.

I said, "I still get sick to my stomach whenever I let myself wonder what it must have been like to be in that choir room that day."

Rachel shuddered, but all three of them looked grateful that I'd gone ahead and opened up the topic.

I think that most of the time, people were to afraid to talk about the stuff they wanted to talk about the most. But at that moment, it felt to me that there was no point in all of us being together if we weren't going to acknowledge and talk about the event that kept us all bound together.

"Tina's written about it," said Mike, "She's writing a book about the whole thing-about glee and community and tragedy and moving on. It's very moving. But anyway, I've never heard her talk about what really happened, but in her manuscript she describes it. I cried like a baby when I read it."

Nodding, Kurt said, "I've read it too. She remembers a lot more than Blaine. Blaine doesn't remember much. It was the second glee rehearsal of the year, and they were fighting about what songs to sing first. Kent Irving walked into the room and they all looked up. Mr. Schue asked if he could help him with anything, and Irving took out his gun and shot Mr. Schue in the face. And after that it's just a blur."

I'd never heard any of that before, and it made my stomach turn, but I wanted more. I asked, "But Tina remembers? What did she say?"

Mike said, "Apparently everyone started screaming and getting down behind their chairs. And Irving shouted something about faggots and the devil and his son, and then he started shooting at everyone. Artie couldn't hide, because of his wheelchair, so Irving killed him next. And then he just kept shooting."

Rachel grabbed my hand as we listen, seeing how white my face had gone. Mike asked, "Do you want me to go on?"

I nodded.

He said, "Sam and Blaine tried to tackle Irving, but they both got shot in the process. Then Blaine crawled to the door and opened it and screamed at people to run, but Brittany and Tina were the only ones who weren't already down. Brittany ran, but Tina was hiding under the piano and too scared to move. Irving chased Brittany down the hall and Tina just sat there, listening to people die around her."

"Oh my god," I whispered, "Poor Tina."

Mike added, "And then Blaine started screaming at her to help him, and she saw him kneeling over Sam, covered in blood and trying to stop Sam's bleeding. Tina went to the first person she saw and tried to do the same. And then things get hazy for her."

I shuddered. I said, "Well, after that we know that Coach Sylvester took Irving down in the hallway after he killed Brittany and those freshman girls. And then the police and the paramedics and the fire department were called."

Rachel squeezed my hand. Kurt said quietly, "And they called you to the scene."

I nodded. "It was the first and only time I ever got paged as a volunteer firefighter. I'd just finished my training. I was at Burt's tire shop when it happened. When I got to the school, I was assigned to help control the crowds of freaking out parents and passersby while the bodies were removed and the rest of the students were evacuated. But I wasn't very useful. The moment I saw Blaine being dragged out of the school, covered in blood, I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing. And everyone was in body bags so I couldn't figure out who was dead, but then I saw them dragging Tina out too, and she was just as hysterical as Blaine, and I just knew…"

I swallowed, unsure if I should say more. I'd never told that story before. Rachel, Kurt, and Mike were all looking at me hungrily, silently begging me to tell them more.

"So I went over to where Blaine and Tina were, and since I was wearing my firefighter coat, nobody tried to stop me. I tried to get them to tell me what had happened, but then Blaine collapsed from blood loss, and Tina got so hysterical that they had to sedate her. I guess you all know the rest of the story."

Kurt said quietly, "Jesus. What a nightmare. They should never have called you to that scene."

I asked, "How could they have known? Anyway, I'm kind of glad I was there. It must have been so hard to only see it all on the news."

The other three nodded sadly. I said, "You know, I've never talked about that before. Sometimes I'm not sure if it really happened."

Kurt said, "It happened. And you should talk about it. Talking helps."

Nodding, Mike said, "We've got to talk about it. It affected all of us. And I think that secretly, we all love to talk about it. It's cathartic. Every time Tina and I get together with New Directions alumni, we have good long, emotional talks about that day."

Rachel said, "I think I've heard everyone's story about where they were and how they reacted three or four times at this point."

I asked, "So why hadn't _we_ talked about it yet?"

Shrugging, Kurt said, "It's a tough subject to broach. The moment has to be right. And Finn, you're extrememly focused on the present. You're always sparking these great conversations about our current thoughts and plans and feelings. It doesn't leave much room to talk about the past."

I frowned, swallowing. "Yeah. Yeah I know I do that. That's the way I live. Forward motion. I guess I should work on making time for memories too."

Rachel smiled wonderingly at me and didn't say anything.

I asked, "So how _did_ you guys find out? Where were you?"

Kurt said, "I was at work, sewing costumes for _Etude_. We had the radio on, and the news came through. A school shooting had occurred in Ohio. At least ten people were dead. My heart stopped beating, but I thought it couldn't possibly be in Lima. It couldn't be McKinley. And then my dad called. I can't describe the feelings that went through my body when he told me."

Nodding, Rachel said, "I remember the feeling. Like you're falling and being compressed and nothing is real. I was sitting in a room full of other girls waiting for an audition when one of them asked me 'Hey, aren't you from Lima?' and I said 'yes,' and she told me about the shooting. I started freaking out, asking what school it had happened at, but nobody knew. And then Finn called from the hospital and told me everything. Most of those girls skipped the audition so that they could bring me home and make sure I was okay."

I had this hollow, dazed feeling as I heard these stories.

Mike said, "Well, I found out on Facebook. I was sitting in my dorm room, watching Grey's Anatomy on my laptop. It was a sad episode, so I was crying a little when it ended," he admitted. "And then I logged into Facebook, and a bunch of people had posted about the shooting and were giving RIPs to everyone. I freaked the fuck out. I called Tina, and she didn't answer. I called my parents, and they didn't answer. I called Mr. Schue, and he didn't answer. I called Artie and he didn't answer. Finally I got ahold of Finn. I was on a plane to Lima within two hours."

We were all quiet for a while. Then Kurt said, "All of it was so unbelievably unfair. I miss them all so much."

"Every day," nodded Rachel, "We lost so many people that day. There were so many people to grieve for all at once that I don't think I ever really grasped the separate pain of losing each of them until the last year or so. As soon as something reminds me of one of them, I start missing all of them and start getting so angry about the shooting. Lately I'm trying to let myself give each of their memories the attention they deserve."

My mind felt like it was buckling under the insane weight of this conversation. Rachel Berry was not supposed to be a girl who thought about things like that. I wasn't supposed to be the guy who understood exactly what she meant.


	22. Let Her Mope

**Chapter 22: Let Her Mope**

We were originally only booked to do one performance of _Soundtrack_ in Chicago, but we ended up doing four in two days because tickets were in such high demand. So between that and our meetup, after the quiet Tuesday afternoon of getting massages and visiting with Mike and Tina, we barely had time to breathe while we were in Chicago.

Friday was a windy, rainy, miserable day, and we all overslept until we had to rush out of Chicago in a mad panic. Blaine, who was usually the most easy-going and low-maintenance of my friends, became extremely irritable and refused to get out of bed when he realized we were out of coffee and didn't have time to stop anywhere.

Kurt drove while I frantically edited and uploaded my vlog while simultaneously catching up on my ever increasing emails and phone calls from theatres, journalists, and sponsors. Rachel got carsick again as we drove into to Wisconsin, and by the time we got to Madison, we were half an hour late for a freezing cold meetup in the rain.

And yet after the meetup, as we hurried, damp, shivering, and hungry, to the theatre to set up for that night's show, I realized that I was enjoying myself more than I had since I'd left Romania three weeks earlier. I think that I'd finally adjusted to the culture shock and emotional inertia of being back with my friends. I was starting to fall back into living life the way I liked to live it; moment by moment, taking it all in and appreciating everything.

I loved being busy, and I loved seeing how our hard work was paying off for Blaine, Rachel, and Kurt's little theatre company. The tour just kept growing; we were adding more shows and getting switched to bigger venues. I'd had several emails and phone calls from producers and directors interested in putting on their own version of the show, but Blaine wanted to wait until the end of tour to make any decisions about that. On top of that, we were selling soundtracks and t-shirts like crazy, and the videos of us singing around the campfire and Blaine and Mike's dance piece were doing so well that the RattleBingBang Youtube channel was being made a YouTube partner and would start earning revenue.

There was so much evidence of our hard work being worth it that I didn't even consider being tired.

"Do you know what we should do?" I asked, once we got back to the RV after one of the most energized and spot-on performances of the tour in Madison.

"Sleep for a week?" asked Kurt, flopping down on the couch.

"No," I said, "We should do a livestream."

Rachel groaned, "A livestream?"

I said, "Yeah. I can broadcast live from the RV, and anyone can tune in and watch. We can see their comments and questions and stuff on our screen."

"I know what it is," Rachel said. "And no offense, but I already spend enough time sitting on the sidelines while your army of followers fawns over you. I'll pass."

This felt a little like being slapped in the face. "What? Is that really how you feel?" I asked, shocked.

Kurt muttered, "Don't be a diva, Rachel."

Shaking her head, she said, "Never mind. I'm just not in the mood." She sulked away, taking her phone and leaving the RV. I stood up to follow her, but Kurt stopped me.

"Just let her mope," he said, "She knows she's being a bitch."

I nodded, still reeling a bit from the guilty realization that Rachel resented my fame. "Do you guys all feel that way?" I asked quietly, "Because I swear, I don't mean to be an attention whore."

Blaine said, "You aren't an attention whore. You're just extremely successful. It's tough for people as talented as Rachel to feel less successful than others."

I swallowed. "But she's in the spotlight every night in _Soundtrack_. She's getting great reviews. Everyone tells her how great her performance is. If that isn't success, what is?"

Nodding, Blaine explained, "This is the first time she's gotten any kind of real professional success as an actress, but it's in a role that she didn't have to audition for because her roommate wrote it, in a show that would never have gotten any attention if her ex-boyfriend hadn't publicized it. Can you see why that fucks with a girl like Rachel's self-esteem?"

He had a simple, graceful way of speaking about one of the most complicated girls I know, and I envied him for it. I nodded.

Grimacing, Kurt said, "Yeah. This whole tour does feel a little bit like we're hitching a free ride on Blaine's talent and Finn's fame."

I said sharply, "Kurt, you and Rachel are both a hundred times more talented than I will ever be."

Nodding, Blaine added, "And I wrote the show, but you know I could never have pulled it off without you guys. You _know_ that. Your talent drives this thing just as much as anyone else'."

"Of course I know that," Kurt said, "But that's not how the diva brain works."

"Nope," said Blaine, "It's not."

I sighed. "But she just seems pissed off that I'm more famous than her."

"Yep," said Kurt, "Of course she is. But that's not your fault. You work hard to keep your audience engaged. Rachel knows better than to make you feel guilty about it."

I said, "Are you guys pissed that I keep dragging you to my meetups when this tour is supposed to be about _Soundtrack_?"

Kurt said, "Maybe when you first mentioned it, but I realized pretty quickly why you were doing it."

Nodding, Blaine said, "We can't expect you to put your career on hold for us. Besides, that way the theatres aren't saturated with people who are only interested in meeting you and don't care about the show. Those people can just go to the meetups."

Kurt said, "And besides which, you're meetups are seriously inspiring."

"But when the three of us go around to meet people," Blaine said, "A lot of people do tend to ask us questions about you. Which makes sense because they're there to meet you. But I can see how that could piss Rachel off."

Grinning, Kurt agreed, "Rachel likes everything to be about her."

I nodded. "Well, I don't know how to change that," I said.

"You don't have to," Kurt said dismissively, "Let Rachel work through her own crap. Blaine and I both got over it. She will too."

Blaine nodded. "But a livestream actually sounds really fun," he said.

Kurt agreed, so I set up my laptop with it webcam and tweeted out that we were going live. We signed into the streaming site, where the chat room was already filling up.

"Hi guys!" I said, "Can you see me? Hear me?"

After a pause, we got a flood of affirmative answers in the chat.

"Awesome," I said. "So we're chilling out in the RV… just had a show in Madison… and I figured it would be a good time to chat."

Kurt and Blaine waved, and the chat flooded again with greetings to each of us.

"Sooo…" I said, "Let's do this. We'll answer questions as we see them."

We all paused for a second as Kurt and Blaine sat on either side of me, leaning in close so we could all read the rapid stream of comments coming in.

"Okay," Kurt said, "I saw a bunch of people asking where Rachel is."

Quickly, I said, "Rachel's taking a walk. She doesn't deal with the confined space in the RV as well as the rest of us do."

I laughed, "I saw someone ask if we ate the cookies they gave us in Indianapolis."

Kurt said, "Yeah, I think so. We've had a few people bring us cookies, and Finn and I always eat them. Rachel's a vegan and Blaine has severe food allergies, so they don't tend to eat things without knowing what's in it."

"Yeah," said Blaine, "I know you're probably not trying to poison me, but I'm not really ready to take that chance."

I read another question, "Is Rachel dating Blaine?"

Kurt smirked, and Blaine laughed. "Wouldn't you like to know," Blaine said, laughing.

As soon as he said this, the chat room exploded.

"Is Finn dating Rachel?" read Blaine, raising his eyebrows.

I tilted my head and said, "Maybe yes, maybe no."

Kurt snorted in laughter. "Is _Kurt_ dating Rachel?"

We all just laughed.

"Kurt's gay, right?" Blaine read, grinning at his fiancé.

"Maybe Kurt's dating Finn…" I read, "Ew, you guys, Kurt's my brother. And anyway, we wouldn't tell you even if any of us were dating. That's our business."

We started ignoring the questions about dating. "Will _Soundtrack _ ever go up on YouTube?"

Blaine said, "Probably not. Not yet, anyway. We're treating this particular production of it as an early workshop. We hope to clean the show up and sell it to a bigger producer at some point."

He read a few more comments and added, "No, I won't sell my soul. I'll never sell all of my creative control. I'm pretty attached to this play."

Kurt read another question, "Finn, what are your plans for after the tour?"

I shrugged. "One thing at a time, you guys. Wait and see."

Blaine read, "Finn, will you ever come back to Brazil?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'd like to."

"Canada? Australia? Germany?"

I said, "Guys, the only plans I have right now are about the tour. If it's not on our itinerary now, I have no idea if or when I'll be there. Sorry."

Kurt said, "Oh my god, these questions are coming so fast. Okay. Uh… next question… Finn, do you have any advice for someone traveling alone for the first time?"

"Do your research," I said, "And don't be afraid to ask questions. With some exceptions, most people are happy to help you if you ask. Check out my vlogs and blogs if you want to know about a specific region."

Blaine said, "Oooh, here's one for me: Blaine, how did you come up with the idea for _Soundtrack_?" He shrugged. "The music came first, and then the story was just obvious from the music. But one thing I don't know if has been made clear enough is that Rachel and Kurt had a big part in writing it to. Most of our lines were developed cooperatively during the rehearsal process."

Kurt said, "He's just being modest. Blaine wrote the whole script. All we did was change our lines a bit."

Blaine said, "I can't write good dialogue. If they hadn't fixed it, the show wouldn't be nearly as good."

I said, "I just saw someone ask how you get inspiration to compose."

Kurt laughed, and Blaine shrugged, smiling slightly. "From all around me. I can't really say. It just happens. But I studied at Juilliard under some great musicians, so I've been trained to channel the random whims into something like _Soundtrack_. I used to just have the music inside my head."

I seriously did not understand how Blaine's head worked.

I said, "Yeah, these guys are both stupidly talented. They constantly make me feel guilty for being so very average. I don't know if you guys know this, but Kurt was working for Kent Warring when he was designing sets for _Hawrelak_, and Warring won a Tony for those designs. He's designed costumes for some of Broadways biggest stars."

Kurt grinned. "True story," he said in a fake-arrogant tone, "I'm a pretty big deal."

Blaine grinned. "Yeah he is."

We spent the next ten minutes or so talking about Blaine and Kurt's careers, and they gave some advice to other hopeful artists in the audience. I sat back in somewhat smug satisfaction. The focus wasn't on me. Take that, Rachel Berry.

Blaine said, "Here's my advice-and this is really mostly regarding artistic goals-things that people say you'll never make any money at. If you have a passion that will get you out of bed in the morning on your darkest days, something that you would do even if nobody knew you were doing it, something that you love the process of just as much as you love the product-chase that passion. Just make sure you remember that it's about loving the endeavor, not about achieving a specific goal. Because chances are, you'll chase that passion right down a road you never knew existed."

Things between Blaine and I had been so awkward in the past few weeks that I'd forgotten how eloquent well-spoken he was. I nodded. "Well said," I agreed, "Sound advice."

Kurt agreed. "But don't be afraid to fall in love with new things. Don't focus so hard on one thing that you miss out on something you might love more."

At that moment, Rachel came back into the RV, giving us a sheepish, apologetic smile as she sat down beside Blaine on the couch and peered into the webcamera's field.

The chat exploded with greetings and questions for her, and she smiled her gorgeous, proud smile, and began answering.


	23. The Crazy Bitch Inside

**Chapter Twenty-Three: The Crazy Bitch Inside**

The next morning we were right back on the road, this time bound for Minneapolis. Blaine drove while Kurt read him tweets and comments from their ever-increasing group of fans.

"I seriously think we could make this thing-Rattle Bing Bang-work as a company," Blaine said, "We don't need big producers-we should just keep putting up our own shows. Clearly we've got an audience."

Kurt said, "We have an audience because of Finn. If he's not following us around with his vlog all of the time, do you really think people will retain interest?"

Shrugging, Blaine said, "I think we should try. We can keep them engaged."

"Well," Kurt said, "Considering that Rattle Bing Bang is apparently the only chance I'll ever get to actually perform, maybe we should."

I heard the hint of bitterness in Kurt's voice, but Blaine didn't seem to. He kept chattering happily about his visions for the future of their little theatre company while Rachel listened with uncharacteristic silence, and Kurt cautiously humoured him.

Rachel was looking a little green and clammy again, and I had to admire her perseverance. She may have been prone to little hissy fits like the one the night before, but she was behaving with commendable restraint. It can't have been easy for someone as prone to motion sickness as Rachel apparently was to have to spend so much time in a bumpy RV. The fact that she wasn't complaining about it showed a lot of growth.

Somehow even as she disappeared to our tiny little bathroom to throw up her breakfast, she looked beautiful.

It crossed my mind that she was making it really hard not to fall completely back in love with her.

But it was like the moment I had that thought, the crazy bitch inside of her reared its ugly head.

"Oh my god!" she shrieked, coming out of the bathroom, "Whoever keeps leaving their razor on the sink needs to fucking stop it. It falls to the floor as soon as this beast starts moving, and I've almost cut my foot on it like a hundred times."

I swallowed. It was my razor. Kurt, Blaine and I exchanged glances, and none of us said anything. She huffed and sat back down on the couch. "And I swear to God, if I have to spend three more minutes in this thing, I'm going to kill myself. How much further until Minneapolis?"

Blaine said quickly, "Half an hour. Do you want to stop for some fresh air?

She rolled her eyes and said sarcastically, "No. No need to stop just because I'm puking my guts out."

"Well if you're going to be a bitch about it, we _won't_ stop," Kurt said.

Rachel said, "Just keep driving."

Blaine did so, and he changed the subject quickly, "Has anyone heard from Quinn? Or is she too cool to hang out with us now?"

"Quinn?" I asked, surprised, "Is she in Minneapolis?"

Quinn had been my first girlfriend. She'd always been kind of a bipolar nightmare of a girl, but looking back I think it was mostly because she was constantly bored out of her mind. Quinn was way too smart for her own good.

Kurt said, "I don't know. Last I heard from her she was heading to medical school at the University of Minnesota. I don't know if she ended up going, or if she would have stayed here for the summer. She could be back in New Haven."

"Med school?" I'd never pictured Quinn as a doctor. The Quinn Fabray I knew was much too self-serving and entitled to ever commit to a profession as demanding as medicine. But the Quinn I knew was also a teenager. I'd never really pictured Quinn as an adult at all. "Wow."

Kurt said, "Yeah I know. She was at Mike and Tina's wedding. She told us then, and we were surprised too. When she was at Yale she was always kind of all over the place. Her plan changed every other month. I don't know if she ever actually followed through on this one."

Blaine said, "I have no idea how to get ahold of her. She quit using Facebook after when she went through her hippie phase a couple of years ago."

It made me feel a little bit better to realize that I hadn't been the only person who hadn't kept fully in touch with everyone from glee club over the years.

Rachel rolled her eyes and said, "I promise you she knows we're coming to town. If she's too bitchy to even come say hi to Finn, then I guess that's her problem."

But I knew that Quinn and Rachel were always better friends than they'd admit to everyone else. Rachel obviously wanted to see her.

"Ugh, I would kill for a manicure right now," Rachel moaned, examining her fingernails.

I almost caught Blaine rolling his eyes, and Kurt said, "So go get one tomorrow. Nobody's stopping you."

She pouted and said, "I can't. I'm broke. Obviously I'm broke. We're only selling out twice as many shows as we'd planned and selling cds and t-shirts like crazy. Why would I have any money?"

I cringed at her sarcasm and said, "We'll have to order more merch soon, I think. I'm just trying to get a theatre to agree to accepting a shipment for us so we can pick it up. Timing it right will be a nightmare, though."

Rachel said, "And then you can give us some of our money from merch sales?"

I said, "Yeah. Yeah I'll do some math today and figure it out."

She looked slightly gratified, but she spent the rest of the drive to the RV park in Minneapolis complaining about how wrinkled her clothes were from not having anywhere to hang them, and how weird the RV was starting to smell.

Kurt suggested going to the Mall of America for lunch and some shopping, to which Rachel snapped, "What, so I can be reminded of all of the beautiful things I'll never have? No thank you. I have no money and no place to put anything I could buy anyway."

"Fine," Kurt snapped back, "Just pout then. Blaine, do you want to come with me?"

Blaine agreed, and the two of them disappeared. I asked Rachel, "Is everything alright? You seem a little high-strung."

She glared at me and said, "It's bad enough that Kurt keeps pointing out what a bitch I am. I don't need you doing it too."

Shrugging, I said, "I just thought you might want to talk."

"Well I don't. I need to be alone. Can you give me that? Just a few fucking moments of privacy?"

I nodded and took my laptop to a coffee shop down the road to get some work done before it was time to set up for that night's show.

For a brief moment, I wished I was somewhere like Sri Lanka or Estonia, immersed in the unfamiliar and unconcerned about anything but my own present.

And then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said she was a fan of my vlogs. She asked if she could get her picture with me, and I ended up having a twenty-minute conversation with her about my vlogs. She told me how proud she was of me for finally reclaiming my past and connecting to real people.

"I've always worried about how much time you spend alone," she said, "Up until these last few weeks, we so rarely saw the same person in your videos for more than a couple of days at a time."

I nodded. "Yeah, it's definitely a change."

"I think it's great," she said. "I mean, I love how adventurous and spontaneous you are. It's inspired me to step outside of my comfort zone and be more mindful of my experiences. But I have always wondered where relationships fit into your whole crazy lifestyle."

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," I admitted. "I guess I still don't really know."

"Well, I'm proud of you," she said, "I'm glad you're not afraid to change things up. I know it can't be easy to do when you've got so many people so committed to participating in your world."

I smiled, grateful for this stranger's intuition. "It's scary alright. I just try my best to emphasize that I'm going through my own journey and that I absolutely don't have any more right answers about life than anyone else does."

"You do a good job," she told me, "And it's why so many of us care so much about you. I hope you can figure it all out. I'll see you at the show tonight, probably."

And then she was gone, and I regrounded myself in my resolve to stop running away from the difficult relationships in my life.

I'd run away from Rachel and everyone else five years earlier because I was too fucked up to deal with how fucked up they were. If I let Rachel's bad attitude scare me away now, it meant that I hadn't grown up at all. I knew Rachel well enough to know that her attitude wasn't who she really was; it was a defense mechanism against her own insecurities and self-doubts.

I just wished it weren't so unbelievably difficult to put up with at times.

When I got back to the RV, Blaine was exiting the RV, smirking a little.

"They're about to start screaming at each other," Blaine whispered, sitting down at the picnic table, "I recommend waiting it out."

I sat down across from Blaine and listened. "You seriously don't see the problem?" Kurt's voice snapped from inside the RV.

Rachel's taken aback voice answered, "No! I was just enjoying a little me time. _What _is your problem?"

He said, "Rachel, we _all_ have to share this space. This space that we have to spend extended periods of time in. You can't just fume the place up!"

I raised my eyebrow at Blaine, and he explained laughingly, "She was burning incense. Meditating. It reeks in there."

"It smells _nice_!" she said, "Better than the weird boy-smell that there was before."

"The weird _boy-smell?"_

She said, "You don't know what it's like being the only girl stuck in this tin can."

"Oh grow up, Rachel," Kurt snapped, "We're just as well-groomed as you are."

Rachel said, "Oh please. It smelled funky."

"Yeah, and now it smells like… fucking… suffocation."

"It's lavender and vanilla," Rachel said, "It's nice."

"Nice for you, maybe," Kurt said. "But you _know_ better than to subject the rest of us to it. What was the point?"

"Meditation," Rachel snapped, "I was _trying_ to mellow out a bit so I would stop being such a bitch. Which you've now completely ruined."

Kurt said, "You never think about anyone but yourself, do you? You _know_ that Blaine's allergic to crap like this. He couldn't stand being in here for more than two seconds. How's he supposed to sleep here tonight?"

I looked at Blaine, who grinned and muttered to me, "I most likely _am_ allergic," he admitted, "But I didn't stay in there long enough to find out. I left to stay out of the way of their fight."

I nodded, smiling understandingly. "Yeah. Yikes," I muttered.

He said, "They fight like this every couple of months. It's tough for divas to co-exist. Just let them duke it out."

We heard Rachel say, "You're just looking for a reason to scream at me because you don't want to admit that this is just as hard for you as it is for me."

"Of course it's hard!" Kurt said, "But you don't have to make it worse for all of us by acting like this!"

Blaine told me, "See, they both have the same problem; for them, this tour is a stepping stone for the careers they really want."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He said, "They're both hoping that the exposure will catch a casting director's attention and give them an opportunity for a bigger role on a bigger stage from a bigger producer with a bigger budget. But for now, this is just something they're doing because they love me and they didn't have any better offers."

"And you think that's why Rachel's been acting crazy?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. I haven't seen Rachel this insufferable in years. Something's going on. I definitely think that they'd both cope better with the complete lack of glamour if they stopped comparing _this_ to the kind of jobs they _really_ want and just start enjoying this as its own special thing."

"Yeah," I said, "You could be right. But those two have always been high-maintenance."

"Trust me, I know," he said, "I've lived with them for four years."

I asked, "But you're handling the touring pretty well?"

He shrugged, "For me, this could be exactly the career I want, so I can overlook the little inconveniences of touring that they get so caught up in. I think it's awesome that we're doing this on our own and that people are paying attention."

I felt bad for Blaine, who so plainly just wanted his friends to be as happy as he was to be working together to share their own work with people who cared.

"Well," I said fairly, "They've both been pretty good sports for the most part, considering their personality types."

He nodded. "Oh absolutely. They knew what they were getting into, and they're too proud not to tough it out. Or at least, Kurt is. I don't know what's going on with Rachel right now."

I sighed. "I don't know either."

"It's okay though," said Blaine quickly, "I don't mean to sound like an ass. None of us thought that living in an RV with Rachel Berry was going to be drama free. Or Kurt, for that matter. But they're my family and I love them to bits anyway. And they have been incredibly supportive of my musical. I'm not really asking for more. I'm just… you know, trying to rationalize why the RV bothers them both so much, when to you and I, it's perfectly comfortable."

I nodded. "Dude, I totally get it. And I think your vision for RattleBingBang is really great. I think you should pursue it as far as you can. Rachel and Kurt will figure out their own paths in time."

He nodded.

I think that that was the longest conversation he and I had had since high school.

Rachel was snappy and unhelpful all throughout setting up for the show, and things only got worse when we went to our dressing rooms to prepare for the performance.

"There aren't any showers? Are you kidding me?" she shrieked, "I can't fucking deal with this anymore! I need a fucking clean, hot shower! How is it possible that that should be so hard to come by?"

I let Blaine deal with her, and I sort of braced myself for an abrasive performance from her that night.

But I should have known better. The moment Rachel Berry walked onto a stage and opened her mouth to sing, all of her crazy, frustrating, diva tendencies were completely validated by her insane talent. She commanded the stage and constructed a character nobody could help but root for. Her voice was like an angel's.

I realized then that Rachel Berry was probably too talented for anyone to ever really love her. There was just too much limitless potential inside of her to ever be fully encompassed by any one person's affection. That's why we could never make things work between us.

And I was seriously pissed off that I was completely in love with a girl who was too talented for love. Because it was unquestionably true; I loved her.


	24. A True Superstar

**Chapter Twenty-Four: A True Superstar**

As the show went on, I kept watching Rachel. She was so fucking astounding. She was insanely skilled at her craft. And I knew that natural ability was only part of it. That girl had practiced singing and dancing and acting tirelessly since she was about six months old. I might not have known a lot about theatre, but I could see that she was a true superstar.

It was the way her whole body seemed to curl and twist and expand coinciding with the emotions of the play. It was how she paused and hurried and cadenced through her lines in a way completely foreign to her natural speaking pattern but completely in tune with the character she was portraying. It was how her voice rang through the theatre, enticing and enthralling even the most distracted and uninterested audience members. She radiated energy when she was given laughter, ebbed with intensity when she was given silence, and exploded with magnetism when she was given applause.

I watched her perform and barely remembered the sullen, bratty, uncooperative woman who she'd been all afternoon. I watched her perform and barely remembered the heartfelt, earnest, ambitious girl who'd captured my love in high school. I watched her perform and all I saw was a superstar who was so far out of my league that it was insane.

I think sometimes I spent so much time seeing her as my first love and my lost love I neglected to fully recognise how astronomically gifted she was. It was no wonder she felt like she deserved bigger opportunities from the world; the _world_ deserved for her to have bigger opportunities to share herself with them.

Anyway, she gave a great performance that night in Minneapolis, and it really got me wondering about how someone like me could possibly fit into her life, and why I would even want to.

We sold merchandise after the show as usual, and Rachel seemed to enjoy meeting the audience and receiving their praise as usual, but she disappeared as soon as the crowd cleared out. Kurt, Blaine and I returned to the stage to pack the sets and equipment back into the trailer, but she was nowhere to be seen. We thought she was off sulking somewhere until we had everything packed up and the staff were locking up the theatre for the night, and she still hadn't appeared.

Kurt called her cell phone. "Where the fuck are you?" he asked.

I heard her voice give a short response and then the line go dead. Kurt rolled his eyes and put his phone back in his pocket.

"What did she say?" asked Blaine.

Kurt said, "With Quinn."

I turned to him sharply. "She's with Quinn? Where?"

"She didn't say," Kurt said, rolling his eyes again. "Let's just go back to the RV park. She'll come back when she's ready."

I was taken aback. "Are you kidding me? I'm calling Rachel back."

Blaine said, "She won't answer."

And he was right. I hung up when Rachel's voicemail picked up. "So she just runs off with Quinn, and you guys think that's normal?"

"No," said Kurt, "But nothing about her behavior the last couple of days has been normal. I'm not particularly interested in letting her get me caught up in her crazy drama."

Blaine said, "Just let her have her girl time. I'm sure she'll be back before we have to leave for… wherever it is we're going next."

"Des Moines," I offered.

"Yeah, there," Blaine agreed.

I shrugged. "Fuck, she's exhausting, isn't she?"

Kurt patted me on the shoulder. "Let's open that wine tonight. We're going to need it."

I smiled. "Alright. Let's go."

I unlocked the RV and we all got in, wrinkling our noses as the sharp lavender scent from Rachel's incense hit our senses. "It actually smells nice," Blaine said unconvincingly, shrugging and blinking as his eyes immediately started watering.

"It smells like my grandmother's closet," Kurt retorted.

I started the RV's engine and said, "At least she was meditating. Making an effort to chill out."

Blaine said skeptically, "Yeah. But the only other times I've seen her meditate were right before her grad showcase at NYDA, and right before her last audition for that untitled Zetsen musical. So she's clearly hyper stressed out."

I sighed, pulling the RV out of the theatre's back lot and onto the road. "Any guesses why that might be?"

Blaine shook his head, sniffling. "I don't know _what's_ gotten into her these last few days."

Kurt shrugged "Maybe it's PMS."

Blaine and I laughed, and Kurt said, "Well, she was going on about how tough it was to be the only girl on tour earlier."

Blaine said, "If that means it'll end soon, I'm okay with it."

His voice sounded suddenly congested, and Kurt's eyes narrowed a bit, watching his fiancé carefully.

I said, "I just hope that she's not getting cold feet about the rest of the tour, because she _needs_ to keep playing that role."

Nodding, Blaine said, "Absolutely. It isn't fair how phenomenal she is. And she _must_ know that." He sniffled again and rubbed his nose. Kurt smirked with a quiet smugness and made no comment.

"But maybe she's starting to doubt her ability to cope with the RV and the road for another three months."

Kurt said, "Well, I'm starting to doubt my own ability to cope with _her_ for another three months."

I said, "I'm honestly pretty pissed that she'd just disappear with Quinn without us. I'd have liked to see Quinn."

"We all would have," Blaine said. "I just hope Rachel remembers that we have to leave early tomorrow… morning…" He trailed off, breath hitching, and squinted his eyes at the setting sun out the window. After a pause, his head pitched forward with a forceful but contained sneeze.

"Bless you," said Kurt, grinning as Blaine's eyes fluttered back shut and he sneezed again.

"One more?" asked Kurt, mildly entertained

Blaine nodded, holding his finger up as his nose twitched and his breath hitched. "I think… yeah…" he sneezed a third time.

Kurt told me, "It's always multiples of three."

Blaine went to the bathroom to get some tissue to blow his nose as I turned the RV into the RV park.

"My eyes itch like crazy," Blaine said, once I'd parked on our designated gravel patch.

Grinning triumphantly, Kurt said, "It's the incense. I _knew_ you'd be allergic."

Rolling his eyes but giving Kurt an affectionate look through his reddened eyes, Blaine said, "Yes, congratulations. Your shouting match with Rachel was justified. But let's get some air moving through here, okay?"

He started sneezing again-six times in a row this time-and Kurt opened the RV's window and door.

Blaine groaned, "The inside of my _ears_ are itchy. Ugh." He wiped allergic tears away from his streaming eyes.

Blaine could be so suave and cool sometimes that he intimidated me, but in the midst of his little allergy attack, he looked less composed and less guarded than I'd ever seen him. The venerability was quite endearing, and I couldn't help but smile.

"Aw… sweetie, I'm sorry," Kurt said kissing Blaine's itchy nose, "Do you want me to kill Rachel for you?"

Blaine shook his head, laughing. "Nah. Let's just sit outside and drink some wine."

I found some paper cups and a couple bottles of wine that we'd purchased in Chicago, and the three of us sat down around the picnic table.

I poured the wine, and Blaine picked a playlist from his iPod to put on. Kurt said, "If you're sneezing all night, I swear to God I will kill Rachel."

"Don't even worry about it," Blaine said, "I'll take some Benadryl and be knocked right out."

He blew his nose again and scrubbed at his now swollen eyes. I asked sympathetically, "Do you always react to scents like this?"

"Yes," Kurt said immediately, "I haven't been able to wear cologne since I was sixteen."

Blaine nodded sheepishly. "It makes me feel like I've got feathers tickling everything inside of my head. Torturous."

I laughed. "I get like that when I'm around cats."

Blaine groaned, nodding. "Ugh," he said, "Cats."

Kurt laughed. "Rachel had a boyfriend with a cat during her third year at NYADA. When he moved in with us, Blaine's head practically exploded."

Blaine laughed. "I couldn't stop sneezing for weeks after he left."

My stomach twisted a little bit, hearing about Rachel's live-in boyfriend. "How long did he live there?" I asked.

"Like two days," Blaine said, "I still think that Rachel used my allergy as an excuse to get rid of him."

Kurt caught my eye and I could tell that he sensed my curiosity about Rachel's love life while I'd been away. He said, "She used to do that a lot. Get really intense with a guy really quickly and then immediately chickened out when things start to seem even a little bit permanent."

I smiled. "I can relate. I've had a lot of very intense but very short relationships over the years."

Blaine gave me a quiet, knowing grin, and I felt uncomfortable. "I don't mean like one-night-stands," I said, "Just… short. It usually starts with some sort of bonding over a shared new experience, like learning Kpanlogo dance in Ghana or playing Kilikiti in Tuvalu. Then we get on this shared endorphin wavelength and just go crazy, sharing ourselves with each other. Things move quickly and powerfully, and then they end."

There was a pause, and then Kurt said, "Okay, even though I watched your vlogs throughout the years and I knew what you were doing, sometimes it stuns me how crazy and exotic your life has been. All of the stuff you've done, and now you're here with us. Doesn't it seem… boring and mundane?"

I said, "Yeah, sometimes." I shrugged. There was another pause, which Blaine interrupted by another three sneezes, and we all laughed.

"I can't really explain anything I feel about being here, or even why I decided to do it. I do know that being around you guys again feels significant to me, and when I've seen and participated in so many remarkable things, I think anything I can still consider significant is worth my full attention."

Blaine nodded, growing quiet like he always did when conversations got personal.

Kurt said, "I suppose if you can feel strongly about any experience, you're going to be enriched by it."

"And I'm certainly having strong feelings about this tour."

"And about Rachel?" asked Kurt wryly, eyes intent on mine.

I felt myself blush a little. "Of course about Rachel."

Kurt said, "You know she's never stopped loving you, right?"

I blushed deeper and said, "I know I haven't stopped loving her."

Blaine looked a little bit startled by my candidness. Kurt said, "You need to talk about it. I promise you, that's why she's acting crazy."

I said, "Oh, we've talked about it. We agreed that we'll take it slow and figure out what we really want before we… you know, move forward with things."

Rolling his eyes, Kurt said, "You're never going to know what you want until you have it."

I swallowed. "Yeah. I dunno."

Blaine's eyes didn't leave my face. Kurt said, "I'm serious, Finn. You need to talk to Rachel. If not about your relationship, about her attitude. If anyone is going to get her to stop being crazy, it's you."

My head was starting to spin, and I didn't think it was because of the wine.

"We don't even know where she is," I pointed out.

Kurt said, "She'll be back."

I said, "Yeah. I'll try to talk to her."

We were quiet, sipping wine for several minutes, and then Kurt changed the topic. "Our YouTube channel hit a hundred thousand subscribers today."

I clapped. "Nice! Congrats."

Blaine said, "And Finn, your channel is getting pretty close to two million."

Grinning, I said, "If only all of those people actually watched every day."

"Oh whatever," Kurt said, "Enough of us watch."

I nodded. Sometimes it was overwhelming to realize just how many people actually did watch me every single day. "Yeah I know."

Blaine said, "I can't imagine doing what you do. Vlogging every day of your life. It must be getting close to five years now."

"It'll be five years at the end of September," I agreed. "It's pretty fucking insane when I think about it. So much footage of my life is out there. Being watched and analyzed by strangers."

Kurt said, "It must be so cool to be able to go on YouTube and have that visual reminder of all of the awesome things you've done."

I said, "Yeah, it's really cool. I can't imagine not doing it at this point."

Raising an eyebrow, Blaine said, "But surely you must get sick of it sometimes. I mean, it's your job, basically. It's a chore."

"Yeah," I admitted, "It can get exhausting. But it forces me to keep my life interesting so that I can keep other people interested."

"And you never get tired of having a magnifying glass constantly on your life? Because I read the comments on some of your videos. People have opinions about everything you do, and they can be a little mean sometimes."

I shook my head. "95% of the time, it doesn't bother me. I can usually read the negative comments and know pretty instantly whether or not it's valid or not. I think the simple fact that I spend so much time watching and editing footage of my life makes me extremely self-aware. There's not a lot people can say about me that I haven't thought myself, or that I can't immediately dismiss as being ignorant or purposely cruel. I'm comfortable with me."

"But so many people are just rude. It's like they just want to find something to criticize."

"It's actually a very small portion of people," I said, "Because most of the people who watch my videos don't comment at all. I get about one comment for every fifty views. And the vast majority of comments are productive and positive. The problem is that too many people respond to the negative comments and call attention to them. But no. I think if anything, the whole experience has taught me never to judge anything anyone does. I've been judged enough to know that most of the time, negative judgements are ignorant judgements."

"So wise," teased Kurt.

I shrugged, "Do you guys get tired of me filming you? Because you're part of it now too."

Kurt said, "Nah. I think it's cool. You know when it's okay to film and when it's not."

I nodded. Blaine asked, "Do you think you'll keep doing it forever?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, YouTube and my audience has been such a huge part of my life for such a long time… I'm never going to let go of the Peregrination community, not if I can help it. I don't really know if that's going to mean vlogging forever, though."

"How did it even start?" Blaine asked, "I've never really figured that out. Why did you start vlogging? And why did people start caring? No offence!"

Laughing, I said, "None taken. It really honestly just started because I loved my mom. I knew that me being gone was hard on her, so I decided to put together videos to keep her included in my life."

"Aw!" said Kurt, "I didn't know that! That's so sweet!"

I grinned. "I know. Adorable. And it got popular because some of the attractions I went to started tweeting my videos of my visits, and people started sharing them on travel websites. Then a couple of other really successful YouTube personalities gave me shout-outs, and it all just sort of snowballed until I could afford to just keep on travelling as long as I kept on vlogging."

"So there are other people who do this?" Blaine asked, "Other 'YouTube personalities'?"

I nodded. "Oh yeah. There are tons of people doing this for a living. I've gotten to be long-distance buddies with lots of them. There's a big community."

"Obviously," said Kurt, "Why do you think all of Rachel's YouTube friends are trying so hard to get YouTube famous?"

Blaine grinned, sipping his wine. "Oh yeah. I mean, I know about viral videos and stuff. I know that there are really popular webseries and stuff. But I mean like the daily vlogs thing. People documenting their lives for YouTube. Do other people do that?"

"Yeah," I said, "Shay Carl, Charles Trippy, Peter Rosychuk… There are lots of them. "

Kurt said, "Well, it feels like what you're doing is pretty unique and special. Especially with your meetups. The way you get people to connect with each other and build community-it's incredibly cool."

"It means a lot for you to say that," I said. "Sometimes I wonder if I take myself too seriously. Especially knowing how much incredible talent is out there in the world, deserving so much more attention than me."

Blaine said, "You take it just seriously enough. But you need to stop acting like what you do doesn't take its own kind of talent. Because it does."

I said, "Well, I genuinely mean it when I say that _Soundtrack_ and frankly everything on your RattleBingBang channel should get more attention. I think _Soundtrack _is a masterpiece."

Kurt laughed. "Okay," he said, "Now we're just going to get ourselves caught in a compliments spiral. Lets just agree that we're all awesome, alright?"

We all agreed and poured ourselves more wine.


	25. You Don't Need Their Spotlight

**Chapter Twenty Five: You Don't Need Their Spotlight**

It was a hot, muggy night, but we had the RV windows flung open wide to air the incense out of the RV, so a gentle breeze kept it from being unbearable. I lay on my couch-bed for a long time, thinking about Rachel and Kurt and Blaine and all of the conversations that I'd had since my return to North America.

Somehow I felt like the more time I spent around anyone, the less I really knew them.

I'd spent my entire adulthood immersed in strange an unfamiliar things, but I'd never been as confused as I was once I was back with people who should have been familiar.

I think that I spent so much time dwelling on the tragedy that had happened after high school that I never really let myself think about all of the wonderful and difficult things that had happened _in_ high school. I'd spent so much of the _Soundtrack_ tour so far wondering how the shooting had really affected my friends that I'd sort of forgotten everything we'd gone through together _before_ the shootings.

Who was I in high school? Who was I back when I really knew these people? I had clear memories of _they'd_ been in high school—or at least I knew how I'd perceived them. But all I could really member about myself was being perpetually confused and overwhelmed.

In high school, Rachel had been the annoying overachiever that had driven everyone crazy. She was insufferably self-obsessed and seemed entirely oblivious to acceptable social behaviour. She'd been endlessly picked on by people like me who couldn't understand why anyone would be so unabashedly passionate about something as campy as musical theatre. It wasn't until I joined glee club that I started to respect what made her so unlikable.

I was a pretty stereotypical football quarterback when I joined glee club—so concerned with how other people perceived me that I'd never really given much thought to who I really was or what I really wanted. Rachel had made me feel bad about that. She made me realize that most people, including myself, were so afraid of failing and embarrassing ourselves that we never really let ourselves care about things the way Rachel Berry cared about her dreams. Rachel Berry was going to be a star because she wasn't afraid of chasing it. And no matter how difficult and frustrating she was, I—and everyone in our glee club-respected her for that. I'd fallen in love with that.

Loving Rachel was never easy. She was self-serving to the point of self-destruction, but so earnest and venerable underneath all of her blind ambition that when she screwed up you felt bad for her-even when she deserved what she got. She was this crazy, incomprehensible blend of complete confidence and complete insecurity that sent me on a perpetual rollercoaster of anger, admiration, and empathy. We broke up and got back together several times over the years. In our senior year, when I realized that the only thing I knew about myself was that I loved her, I proposed, and she said yes. It seems crazy now, but at the time, it was the only option I could think of to keep her and I together when I knew the looming adult world would try to pull us apart.

And the funny thing was that after all of those years had passed with us being apart, I still felt all of the same things about her. And fundamentally, she was still that unrestrainedly determined and passionate girl. But there was a new thoughtfulness and a new compassion that hadn't been there, and it scared me. A Rachel Berry who was able to look past herself and her ambition to channel that unending passion into relationships and self-awareness was somehow a lot more intimidating and unpredictable than the one-track Rachel I'd once known.

And then there was Kurt. I'd known him since kindergarten; we'd been at the same elementary school. When we were really young, I remember him as a hyperactive kid who'd had every girl in our grade completely captivated with his elaborate make-believe games and love of dolls and dress-up. He'd alienated himself from the guys in our grade from a pretty young age, but he didn't let our teasing and taunting bother him, so it was never fun for us. Then, when we were in the third grade, his mother had died in a car accident. Everyone left him alone after that; no eight-year-old knew how to act around a kid who'd just lost his mom. We were all very nice to him, but he disappeared inside himself and kept buried in books and magazines for the rest of elementary school.

He'd gone to a different middle school than me, and by the time we met again in high school, he'd become a sullen, sarcastic, teenager, dancing defiantly just outside of the closet door as if daring someone to try to chase him back inside. And trust me; we'd tried. I shudder a little when I remember all of the shitty, awful things we did to him. Even after I'd joined glee club, it took me a long time to get comfortable with Kurt's flamboyant homosexuality. It was just too foreign to my sheltered, ignorant, football player brain.

When we were sixteen, our parents started dating, and it was incredibly awkward. I remember a lot of painful and uncomfortable accusations and fighting. When I look back at my teenage years, I'm constantly humiliated by all of the stupid, pointless agony I put myself and Kurt though as I struggled to accept Kurt as my brother. I realize now that his own struggle to accept himself and his place in the world was a hundred times more significant than my own petty insecurities, and I hate myself for it. The teenage Kurt had been an unusually kind and unselfish person, full of optimism and romanticism. He hadn't deserved any of the miserable crap that I'd said and done to him, or stood by and let be said and done to him.

In our junior year, Kurt had been bullied and threatened so ruthlessly that he'd had to change schools. He enrolled at the Dalton Academy, and that's where he met Blaine Anderson. I know that most people who know Kurt credit Blaine for saving Kurt from the dark and scary place that he'd been disappearing into. I don't know if I'd ever really seen him happy before he started dating Blaine. When Kurt returned to McKinley high towards the end of junior year, he was a stronger, more grounded man. His confidence was no longer an act of defiance against the world; it was genuine. And suddenly, I no longer had any qualms about calling him a brother.

The twenty-three year old Kurt was essentially a stranger to me, but I still saw that same defiant determination in his eyes as I'd seen when we were fifteen and I was tossing him into dumpsters, and that gentle confidence that he'd returned from Dalton possessing. He was still sarcastic and a little bit guarded, but the way he spoke and carried conversations was very unlike the Kurt I'd once known. The nativity and idealism that had once shone underneath his defiant effeminacy was gone. His edges were sharper now. He, more than any of us, seemed like an adult.

And Blaine? I think it makes sense that I'd noticed the fewest changes in him, since I'd known him the least in high school. I didn't really have much to do with him until he transferred to McKinley for his junior year, which was my senior year. And I'd always been very threatened by him. He was too talented. And too charismatic. Too confident. He was everything I wished I was, and he didn't seem to have to try at anything. It made me want to hate him, but I couldn't because he was too nice. Too poised. Too cool. He never said or did anything that rubbed anyone the wrong way. Everyone liked him. Everything seemed to come easy for Blaine Anderson, and I'm ashamed to say that I resented him for it.

Looking back, I realize how stupid that was. If anything, I should have respected him. He'd grown up gay in a very homophobic community, and I knew he'd been victimized and even assaulted because of it. His confidence should have been admirable. But my own self-esteem was so low that I couldn't even begin to see it that way.

After he finally called me out for being an asshole to him and I admitted my jealousy to him halfway through my senior year, we called a truce and finished the school year as allies. Still, I'd be lying if I said that he and I had ever really been friends. Blaine had always been a bit of a mystery, and that hadn't changed, even five years later. He never revealed very much of himself.

He wasn't shy by any means; he'd always thrived on being the centre of attention. He could talk to people for hours. He asked questions people wanted to answer, and he really listened to the answers, staring at you with those intense, unreadable green-brown eyes. He expressed enthusiasm for all the right things at just the right time, and he gave out the compliments people needed and the advice that they wanted. Most people seemed to be instantly charmed by all of this, but it made me uncomfortable. He always seemed interested in other people, but I could never really understand his interest. I could never figure out what he was thinking.

Blaine only ever offered up anything about himself was when he when he spoke about his music and his writing and his plans for the future. His energy when he spoke about stuff like that was occasionally frightening. But he never spoke about anything past or internal. Sometimes he would offer analysis of other people's behavior, but that was about as personal as a conversation with Blaine would get. And for the first few weeks of tour, this really drove me crazy.

It didn't really help that he had Kurt. They their engagement and their history and their strange, almost telepathic connection with each other. It kept them just a little bit distanced from everyone else. They were extremely private about their relationship, requiring large amounts of one-on-one time away from everyone else. I didn't know what they talked about when they were whispering in dressing room corners or giggling at cafes down the street, but they never seemed to run out of stamina for each other. It was sweet, but a little bit alienating—I was finding it difficult to really reconnect with either of them because they kept disappearing with each other.

To be honest, everything was sort of driving me crazy. Things were a lot less messy when I only had to worry about myself and how best I could compartmentalize my life and my ideas into fifteen-minute video diaries. When nothing was constant so I didn't really have to understand any of it.

But when Rachel walked into our RV site the next morning looking serene and gorgeous, I loved her and everything around me anyway.

And she was with Quinn. Quinn, whose blonde hair was longer than I'd ever seen it, and who had her arm linked with Rachel like they were sisters.

How insane was the world that two girls as completely different—who shouldn't have anything in comment except the town they grew up in—were still so important to each other after all of these years?

I wasn't at all interested in remember the whole complicated, ridiculous, painful history that I had with Quinn Fabray.

"Oh my god, Finn!" She threw her petite body at me for a big hug. "Hi!"

I hugged her back and tried to catch Rachel's eye, but she wouldn't look at me. "How've you been, Quinn?"

Quinn shrugged, stepping back to look deep in my eyes with this searching look that I couldn't place. "I'm good," she said after a pause. "Very good."

"And where were you two all night?" I asked, not patient enough to pretend like them disappearing together for ten hours hadn't pissed me off.

"At my place," said Quinn, not even blinking. "Talking. Girl time."

I shrugged. I had this yearn inside of me to sit down and find out everything that Quinn had been up to for the past five years, but should have been on the road to Iowa half an hour earlier, so there was just no time.

"Rachel, we've got to go," said Kurt, barely acknowledging Quinn, "We're already running late. Are you ready?"

She nodded and gave Quinn a long hug goodbye.

"Don't be a stranger," Quinn told me, and then we were gone.

Kurt and Rachel argued about her disappearing act all the way to Des Moines while Blaine slept and I edited my vlog. It was an exhausting haze of a day after my sleepless night in Minneapolis, and I think I spent more time thinking about the conversation I knew I needed to have with Rachel than I did actually paying attention to my surroundings.

When the day was over and Kurt and Blaine went out for dinner alone, I sat down with Rachel in the RV and said, "Okay, we need to talk."

She froze, looking up at me with a fear in her eyes that I didn't understand. "We do?"

"Yeah," I said, "We do."

She sat very still and asked, "What do you want to talk about?"

I said, "Rachel, I think you know."

She didn't say anything.

I said, "You were treating all of us like crap yesterday. And then you just disappeared all night? Rachel, come on. What's going on?"

She was sitting with her legs crossed and her hair draping over half of her face. Her expression twitched slightly as if she was trying to decide what to say.

"Look," she said, "I know it's not okay to act the way I've been acting, but maybe life just isn't working out the way I want it to. And maybe I'm just not as good at accepting that as everyone else seems to be."

That venerable, insecure sixteen-year-old girl that I'd once known was peeking through the 23-year-old woman before me, and I couldn't help but move closer to her. "Aw, Rachel, I'm sorry. Talk to me about it. Don't take it out on us."

She sighed. "I'm sorry, but I never wanted to live in an RV, and I never wanted to be a roadie and a stage hand and all of the other crap we have to do here. I can appreciate why you guys get so much satisfaction out of the Do It Yourself thing, but to me it just reminds me constantly of how far from where I want to be I really am. And I don't want to be that ungrateful bitch when all of you are having such a blast, but I just can't help it."

I had this wave of unidentifiable emotion that I made me put my hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "Sweetie, none of us expected this to be easy for you. You don't have to try to be someone you're not. You just can't take it out on us. Just tell us how we can make it easier for you."

Staring at her knees, Rachel said, "Honestly, it's just been a tough couple of days. I found out that I didn't get the role I've been auditioning for in New York-the one I was at a meeting about that day you first came into New York. They've been stinging me along for months, and now they're going in a 'different direction.'"

My stomach dropped a little. "Oh Rachel. I'm so sorry. You were really counting on that, huh?

She paused, finally looking up and pushing her hair behind her shoulders. Slowly, carefully, she explained, "I've landed several off-Broadway roles from that casting director. He's been telling me for years that I'm a star and that he'll find me my spotlight soon. This new Zetsen musical was supposed to be it. They told me that they were writing the role for me. They told me that I was their muse. They promised me their spotlight. And now they don't want me at all."

My stomach felt heavy. She was starting to cry. I took her hand in mine and said, "Rachel, you don't need their spotlight. You have your own spotlight. You know that."

She nodded, brushing away tears quickly, "Of course I know that. I'm just really disappointed. And really upset with myself for it. I know that Blaine gave me an incredible gift when he wrote Rita for me in _Soundtrack_. The role I'm playing _right now_ is probably the greatest role I'll ever play, but I just can't appreciate it, because it's still so far removed from my childish vision of what success as a stage actress would be."

I smiled a little. "Rachel," I said, "The mere fact that you can acknowledge that your ambition clouds your perception of your current situation shows _so much_ growth from who you were five years ago. I don't think you need to beat yourself up about knowing what you want as long as you can find a way to appreciate what you have in the meantime."

She smiled a bit too. "Well," she said, "That's the problem, though, isn't it? I can see that I _should _appreciate all of this… but I'm struggling to actually get there."

"Anyone can see that you were born to play Rita."

Nodding, Rachel said, "Of course. Blaine wrote me the perfect character. And I certainly _adore_ being on stage playing such an ambitious and challenging role. I really believe that Blaine could take _Soundtrack_ to Broadway someday. I just know how far we have to go before that's going to be a reality, and I don't know if I'm patient enough. I so badly wish that I was, but I just don't know. I want to be on Broadway, Finn. That's all I've ever wanted. And I never thought it would take so long. I never thought it would be so hard."

The pace of her speech was increasing, and I felt a familiar rush of panic. I started talking, "I'll give you the same advice I preach constantly on my vlog; try to just enjoy the Right Now. You've got to dream and you've got to plan for your future, but the most important thing is to find joy in your current reality. If you can't stop comparing what you have now to what you want, you'll never be able to do that. And I know that that advice is easier to give than to follow."

She paused, eyes closing as she thought. I pulled her in for a hug, which she accepted readily, curling up against my chest. After a while she said, "To be honest, I think most of what's stopping me from finding the joy in all of this is how entirely confused I am about you."

I laughed weakly. "Oh my God, tell me about it," I said, "I feel the same way—about you."

She smiled. "I love you," she whispered.

My blood suddenly felt like it was on fire. I whispered back, "I love you too."

And then we sat there for a very long time in silence.

Rachel finally just leaned in and kissed me. An electric chill ran through my body, and I kissed back. My hands immediately tightened around her back. I expected her to stop me as I drew myself nearer to her and slipped my tongue into her mouth, but she just nodded and invited more.

"Let's just love each other," Rachel whispered, "I was wrong to think it should be complicated."

I nodded. "Okay. Keep it simple. So simple. Life is both too long and too short not to do the things you're uncertain about, right?"

She nodded along with me, and took off her shirt.


	26. How Chaotic My World Feels

**Chapter Twenty-Six: How Chaotic My World Feels**

Time was starting to speed up now that Rachel and I were back together and I'd adjusted to the initial culture shock of being back in North America. After Des Moines we went to Kansas City, while Rachel and I kept our newly rekindled romance a secret from Kurt and Blaine. We took advantage of every private moment to flirt or kiss or have sweet, satisfying sex. The tension between her and Kurt dissolved, and the mood in the RV improved significantly.

We went next to Nebraska to conclude the first month of tour on a high note with a sold out show in Omaha. June started with a trek across both of the Dakotas and then though Montana and south to Wyoming. By the time we got to Colorado, on the eleventh of June, we'd sold out ten more shows and were running very low on CDs and t-shirts to sell.

Our brief period of relative bliss ended when Rachel, Blaine, and I all got food poisoning in a restaurant in Denver. We spent a day clammy, nauseous, and rushing to the bathroom every ten minutes. It stalled our departure to Utah by almost six hours, but Kurt volunteered to stay up driving while the rest of us slept off our fevers and stomach aches. It wasn't until morning that I found out that the highway we'd planned to take into Salt Lake City was closed because of massive forest fires. The detour Kurt had to take meant that we didn't even pull into the city until an hour before the meetup in the park was supposed to start.

I was still feeling a groggy and weak from the food poisoning, but it was nothing to how exhausted Kurt looked after driving right through the night. Yawing, he sat down beside Blaine, who handed him his coffee cup. For Blaine this early in the morning, sacrificing his coffee was an unprecedented display of true love.

Rachel said, "Don't drink coffee, Kurt. Go to bed. You can sleep until we have to start setting up at the theatre."

Shaking his head, Kurt said, "I'm not missing the meetup." He drank the coffee, but I could tell he was dying to just crawl into bed. I was pretty sure one sleepless night was nothing compared to the abdominal torture Rachel, Blaine, and I had endured the day before, so I couldn't feel bad for him.

"How're you guys feeling?" Kurt asked, as though reading my mind.

"Much better," Rachel said, "Just a bit… wobbly. Know what I mean?"

Blaine nodded. "Yeah I hear you. A bit dizzy."

"Our blood sugar is probably tanked," I said, "We'll feel better after we finally get some food in us."

We did feel much steadier after breakfast, but it was a stiflingly hot day. Smoke from the forest fires down the road was hanging in the bone-dry air like fog, making our throats itch and our eyes water. Rachel was in another one of her moods, walking with her head straight forward, tight-lipped and silent except when she complained how badly she needed a shower. Kurt was exhausted and bad-tempered, and I felt bad for Blaine, who couldn't seem to stop coughing long enough to cheer Kurt up. Still, we felt united in our bad moods when a month prior they would have just divided us.

The meetup was small, and the sense of solidarity and family we got from the people who showed up made all of our bad moods lessen. We got to spend plenty of time meeting people, sharing stories. Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine previewed a song from _Soundtrack_ acoustically for the group to great applause. After a while, we ended up sitting in a large group asking and answering questions and trying to stay cool in the shade.

"Okay, I'm going to take a nap," Kurt said later, after we'd had lunch and were back at the RV, which we'd parked on the street by the theatre, "I can barely keep my eyes open."

Rachel said, "Well, I saw a Laundromat a few blocks up, so I'm heading there. Give me whatever you need washed."

So she left and Kurt fell asleep. I looked at Blaine, who was picking at his guitar on the couch, repeating the same haunting phrase over and over in various configurations, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

I got the feeling he wanted to be alone to work on whatever he was working on, so I decided to go for a walk to see what there was to see. I was surprised, however, to hear Blaine follow me out the RV, asking, "Where're you going?"

I told him, and he asked, "Mind if I join you? I'm stir crazy."

Blaine and I had barely spent any time together without Rachel or Kurt, so this made me nervous, but I agreed.

The sun was piercingly hot. As we started walking, I said, "I know it's not a great day for a walk, but I like to see as much as I can while I have the time."

Nodding, Blaine said, "I know you do. I'm sorry that you don't have much time to do it on this tour."

I appreciated that he'd considered how different this kind of touring was from what I usually did, but I was genuine when I said, "I don't mind. I've been to most of these places before, you know."

He coughed. "Yeah. Yeah I know. Sometimes it overwhelms me when I think about all of the places you have been. I don't know how you hold it all inside your head."

I laughed. "I don't. That's why I vlog."

Blaine said, "It's inside you, though. A whole world of experiences that I will never have."

"Only because you made other choices," I said, "You're much too ambitious to ever do what I did. You, Kurt, and Rachel all had dreams to run towards when things got tough. I didn't have a dream, so I just ran. And now somehow we all find ourselves running down the same path."

Blaine grinned, shaking his head in wonder. "Jesus, Finn," he said, "The way you talk sometimes… You don't hold anything back, do you?"

I felt a little embarrassed. We crossed the street and entered a park. "I've spent a lot of time learning how to say the right things in the right way to make people think. With the vlog, you know. I know it's weird. It's just a habit. Somewhere during _Peregrination_, I forgot how to speak casually."

He said, "It's not weird. It's awesome. You say what you're feeling. What you're thinking. I'm the opposite. People say I'm charming, but I never say anything that reveals anything real about who I am."

I was starting to feel uncomfortable about the sort of mood he was in, but I was intrigued enough by his sudden desire to have a real conversation. I was intrigued to hear him voice the thing I'd often thought about him.

"Yeah. You're a tough one to read, alright."

Looking guilty, Blaine said, "I know."

I shrugged. "That's who you are. I think your music speaks so you don't have to. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves."

"That's what Kurt says," Blaine admitted, "He says my brain wired for music, not conversation. And it's true. Sometimes…" he hesitated, and said in confidential tone, "Sometimes I don't think people realize how chaotic my world feels when I'm not making music."

I remembered what Rachel and Mike had said about him in Chicago about synesthesia, and I had a surge of affection for the complete enigma of Blaine Anderson. I shrugged. "And is that a problem? I mean, do you want to change that?"

Blaine shrugged too, coughing again. "Not really. I love what I do, and I'm good at it. And I have Kurt. He makes the chaos go away. But being around you does make me wonder how valid my preference for privacy really is. You live your life as an open book for the world, and you love it. I wonder if I shouldn't try a bit harder to be like that."

"Look," I said, "When I started vlogging, I figured out that what I had to say was relatable and maybe even inspirational to a lot of people. It made me want to keep talking. It's what I'm good at. You're good at other things. I'm not saying that you shouldn't try new things, I'm just saying… don't compare yourself to me. Know your strengths, and don't waste your life struggling to overcome weakness that don't need overcoming."

He smiled, a sudden look of peace coming across his face. He said, "Sound advice."

We were walking slowly, but he was breathless and obviously uncomfortable. I felt bad for him; the hot, ummoving air was heavy with forest fire smoke, and it was obviously hard on him; his coughs revealed a high pitched whistle rasping in his chest that made my hair stand on end.

I asked, "Is there something you want to talk about, Blaine? I mean, you just seem a little... weird."

"Oh." Blaine looked mildly surprised, but he nodded. "Yeah, I guess I am. I wanted to talk to you about something, and instead we just started talking about how I don't talk."

I stopped walking and sat down a slope beside a stream running through the park. He sat down beside me. "So what is it?" I asked.

Blaine cleared his throat and coughed a few times, gathering his thoughts. "Look," he said, "We've been on the road now for a month, and I don't… I don't feel like you and I have really… I dunno. Connected. Maybe it's in my head, but I feel like we just… like there's tension between us."

My stomach flip-flopped a bit, and I felt an extreme awkwardness fall over me. Slowly, I said, "Oh. Uh… yeah, I feel it too."

He said, "Look, Finn, it's no secret that you and I didn't get along in high school. We… we clashed."

I remembered. "Yeah. But I was insecure and jealous. I had no idea who I was or what I was good at, and you… you had it all together."

He said, "I was very good at _acting_ like I had it all together. And that's probably why I rubbed you the wrong way. Because it was an act. Come on, Finn. I was just as insecure as you were. Probably more."

I shrugged. "Maybe that's true. I don't know. Anyway, that's different now. I've got _me_ figured out. I just… I sometimes feel like you resent me a little for coming back."

Blaine nodded and a coughing spell overtook him. I frowned in concern when the coughing dragged on longer than could be healthy, but he rolled his eyes and gave a dismissive wave. He finally said, "Gross. Sorry." He cleared is throat. "Look, Finn; what you've done with your life… the travelling and the YouTube stuff… Finn, it's amazing. And it's exactly what you should have done. But it doesn't change the fact that… that you weren't here. You left."

I grimaced, stomach churning. I said, "Trust me, Blaine, I am _hyper_ aware that there are things between you and Kurt and Rachel that I will never understand. You're right. I wasn't here. And maybe I should have been."

He shook his head, staring at the water and sitting very still. He said, "It's not like that. I know that you're intelligent and empathetic enough to understand just about anything. I think that leaving was exactly what you needed to do."

I wanted to interrupt, but he kept talking. He said, "It's just… it took me a long time to feel human again after the shooting. And your vlog… you showing your journey to the world… it constantly reassured me that life could go on and still be wondrous. You were a big part of my healing process without even being here."

He paused, coughing again, and I swallowed the sudden urge to cry. I hadn't expected that.

He said, "Look, I know I'm not making much sense. But I've never been able to include very many people in… the psychological trauma I've had to recover from. It's a very private part of me, and I think I've done a good job of boxing it up and burying beneath more joyful things. But now you're here and it feels like you're inside that box without being invited, and it scares me."

Blaine stopped, taking a few shaky breaths, and added, "So it's like… I don't know. I can't explain it. I'm not good at explaining stuff like this. I'm just saying… you make me nervous. And I'm sorry if I've made it awkward between us. Because I appreciate what you're doing for us way more than I can express. Really. I just don't know how to relax around you."

I slid closer to him and gave him a hug. It must have been exhausting and scary for a guy like Blaine to say what he'd just said to me, and he looked so vulnerable and embarrassed that it almost hurt to look at him.

I said, "Blaine, you don't have to apologize, but I'm glad you told me. I think I understand how you feel pretty clearly. And it a lot of ways, I've felt the same way. You make me nervous too. I don't know what the taboos are-I don't know what's okay to talk about and what's not. It's hard to talk to you without remembering that day—that day I'm afraid to talk about with you."

He said, "It's not a taboo. It's just hard. I don't know what to tell you. Because I think you probably understand the horror of…that day…better than anyone except Tina. But you and I have never talked about it."

I nodded, feeling tears threaten me again. "I know there are no answers. I'm just glad we can acknowledge it. Because honestly? For most of the time I was away, I didn't know if you were okay. I had no idea how you'd recovered and moved on. And I was afraid to know. Because it was bad enough that ten people had died; if you or Tina had been broken beyond repair, I wouldn't be able to deal with it."

"We're not broken," Blaine said, "And even if we were, it wouldn't have anything to do with you."

I said, "I know it. But it's still a hard thing to live with. I have to work hard not to let the guilt take over."

He said, "It's hard. I know. But that's the difference between us and certain other people. We work hard to keep our lives productive and rewarding, while they let the pain and the guilt drag them down."

We were both crying, and I felt like a very large stone has been removed from my stomach.

He laughed a little through his tears. "Fuck," he said, "It's way too hot for tears today. What a miserable fucking day to have a heart-to heart."

I joined his quiet, apologetic laughter and gave him another hug, standing up and wiping my eyes. He choked on his tearful laughter and started coughing, getting to his feet too. I said, "I'm glad we talked."

Nodding, he said, "Me too. I just hope that what I said made some sense."

"It did," I assured him.


	27. A Game of Make Believe

**Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Game of Make Believe**

Rachel and Kurt were both in much better moods by the time we started setting up the stage for that night's show; they had clean clothes and they'd both had showers.

"Where were you and Blaine?" Rachel asked conversationally as we assembled the screen for the stage.

I said, "We just walked around to see some sights. Nothing too exciting."

I wanted to say more, because it felt like something significant had changed between Blaine and I, lifting a huge weight off of my shoulders, but I couldn't really find any words to describe it without betraying Blaine's confidence.

Her eyes were squinted in concern about something happening behind me. I glanced back and saw Blaine leaning against the wall, balancing a box of props on his hip and coughing relentlessly.

"He's been doing that all day," I told Rachel, "Should we be worried?"

She shrugged, still watching him. She said, "I've just never heard him cough like that before. I imagine all the smoke is pretty awful on his asthma." She walked towards him, and I followed.

"You alright?" she asked, taking the box from him.

He let her take the box and held up a hand, muttering, "Gimme a minute…" between coughs.

Rachel brought the prop box to its place behind the drum set, and Blaine got his coughing under control as she returned.

"You gunna live?" I asked, trying not to sound overly concerned and embarrass him.

Rolling his eyes, Blaine said, "Yeah, I'm fine. It just hurts to breathe is all."

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but Blaine spoke again before she could. "I should go help Kurt with that amplifier."

And he darted across the stage. Rachel rolled her eyes.

We finished setting up and went to the dressing room to binge on the fruit tray the theatre had provided for us.

"I'm probably going to be coughing through the whole show," Blaine warned us, "But just ignore it. Don't let it fuck up the timing. We'll just have to adapt."

"I'm sure people will understand," Rachel said, "I don't think any of us can breathe properly in this smoke."

Blaine nodded. "Exactly. But I'm gunna tweet a disclaimer right now in case I suck tonight. At least then nobody can say I didn't warn them." He took out his phone. "'Advance apologies for what could be a sketchy performance tonight; forest fires south of SLC are killing me. #soundtrack #asthma'."

Kurt gave Blaine an affectionate smile. "You're too tough to let a bit of smoke stop you from giving a great performance. We all know it."

He gave a cocky grin and nodded. "Of course."

That night I paid more attention to Blaine's performance than I ever had before; usually I was too fixated on Rachel to really appreciate the skill with which Blaine supported her.

The character that Blaine was playing was very similar to his natural personality, but Blaine knew how to amplify and dramatize that personality so it suited the stage. He wasn't a trained actor like Rachel, nor an aspiring one like Kurt, but it came easily to him. His character was comedic and clever, and I believed in him. Still, it was clear that Blaine's real talent was the music. He said he was a composer first and a performer second, but when he sang, you would never know it. He didn't have Rachel's powerhouse Broadway pipes, but his voice had a smooth, pleasing quality to it, and the way he owned it and threw his body into the music made you care about the songs.

He was a natural performer, but not in the same way that I remembered from high school. In high school, he'd been a crowd-pleaser, latching onto the audience's energy and opening his whole heart up to the people around him. The way he performed now was much more self-contained. He acted as though it was all a game of make-believe, and nobody was present except for him. He sang and played his guitar as though he were submerged in the music and nothing in the world could convince him to come up for air.

I didn't really know what to make of that observation, but I knew that it worked for the show.

The whole performance of _Soundtrack _went off without a hitch just like every night. This was pretty impressive considering how carefully paced the whole thing has to be in order to line up with the projection on the screen playing above the stage. Blaine barely coughed throughout the show, and if I hadn't been listening for it, I wouldn't have been able to tell that he was short of breath.

I was surprised, then, when left the stage after our final bows and Blaine said, "Okay guys. I can't breathe."

He practically collapsed against the wall, tilting his head back, neck and shoulders pinched with the strain for air. I was surprised to hear the rapid, shallow, constricted wheezes escaping him.

"Oh my god," said Kurt, looking taken aback, "You're not kidding. Where's your inhaler?"

Blaine pointed to the table just a few feet away, where a small red inhaler was sitting; Blaine had clearly left it there in anticipation of an incident like this on stage.

I saw a brief moment of genuine panic in Blaine's eyes when Kurt brought him the inhaler and he seemed to be unable to pull enough of the medication into his lungs to make a difference. He closed his eyes, chest heaving, and tried again.

Kurt rubbed Blaine's shoulders, and the quiet whisper of a wheeze gradually got louder as more air was able to pass in and out of Blaine's chest. After a few minutes, he started coughing again.

"Well that's a good sign," he joked hoarsely between coughs, "You have to have air to cough, right?"

The panic was gone from his eyes, and both Kurt and Rachel relaxed. I was less quick to let him brush it off. "That's fucking scary, Blaine," I said, "You should go to the emergency room."

Blaine shook his head. I could hear a growl somewhere deep in his lungs with each exhale he took. "I'm okay. It's probably…" He coughed, "More of a panic attack than an asthma attack. You know how I get after performances."

It was true that Blaine was prone to nearly hyperventilating when the adrenaline from a good performance overwhelmed him, but this seemed very different to me.

"You sure?"

He nodded. He was plainly exhausted, but his breathing had slowed down and was sounding less constricted by the second, so I decided not to press the subject.

Kurt said, "You're taking it easy tonight. No scaring us like that again."

He nodded with an embarrassed, apologetic smile.

Blaine was quiet while we sold merch and talked to fans, but by the time we got everything back into the RV, he was back to his usual self. Kurt went to bed early after his all-night drive the night before, and Blaine sat on the couch with his guitar, singing duets with Rachel while I drove and gave my requests.

"You two sound incredible together," I said, "I honestly don't know why you don't record an album or something. People would totally buy it. I get comments saying so on my vlog every time I record you guys singing."

Smiling, Rachel said, "I know. We just don't have the time or money. Doing the _Soundtrack_ album was hard enough. None of us know much about producing music, and it's just not a priority for us to learn."

"Well, I'm sure you could get someone on board to help you."

Blaine shrugged. "I'd rather just compose and let other people record it. It's just not my thing."

Nodding, Rachel said, "I'd so much rather be on a stage than in a studio. And I kind of like the way we're doing it with YouTube. We can just goof around, come up with a song, film it, send it out into the world, and be done with it."

Blaine agreed. "It's fun."

I shook my head. "If you say so. I just think you guys are so used to spending time with other insanely talented people that you don't realize how insanely talented you are."

"Oh, we realize it," Rachel said, grinning at me, "And we want to use our talents the way we enjoy using them, not necessarily the way that would make us the most money."

I said, "And yet you constantly complain about how low-budget this tour is."

Rachel stuck her tongue out at me. "It's not the same thing."

"If you say so."

They kept singing, and I kept driving.


	28. I'm Not Dying or Anything

**Chapter Twenty-Eight: I'm Not Dying or Anything**

Rachel and Blaine went to bed early too, and I appreciated the quiet solitude as I drove us to Boise, Idaho. It was almost midnight when we approached the city limits and I was startled out of my peaceful non-thinking state by a quiet voice behind me.

"Hey… Finn?"

I glanced up to see Blaine standing there.

"Hmm?" I asked, watching the road for the corner I was supposed to take for the RV park.

"Don't… ah…" Blaine sat down in the passenger seat and said softly, "Don't freak out…"

I was sure that the corner should be coming up any moment, but we were at a weird, 5-way intersection, and I didn't know which way I should go. "What?"

"D'you uh… hmm." Blaine paused, and I proceeded straight through the intersection, hoping for the best.

Blaine murmured, "I think you should take me to the emergency room."

He said it in his usual calm and composed tone, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to say in the middle of the night.

I was so caught off guard that I almost swerved into the next lane. "Oh my God, Blaine," I said, "What's wrong?"

He said, "Asthma. Turn right here. There's a hospital up the hill."

I swore under my breath and abandoned all thoughts of the RV park. I signalled to turn into the next lane and follow the sign pointing to the local hospital.

Blaine sat very still in the seat beside me, and I could hear his carefully paced wheezes as loud as day, dragging in and out of his chest. It sounded uncomfortable, but it didn't sound like it was serious enough to warrant an emergency room visit.

"Is it really that bad?" I asked, "You seem alright."

He grimaced, and I saw the exhaustion in his eyes. "I can't fucking breathe," he said. "My inhaler's not working. It's only getting worse."

I hated the idea of sitting in an emergency room all night, but I remembered what Rachel had told me weeks earlier about Blaine only asking for help when he really needed it. "Okay," I said, "We're going."

We fell silent as I drove, and in the silence I was suddenly able to hear how difficult his respiration really was. He was making shallow, straining, whimpering attempts at inhaling followed by heaving, painful, grunting attempts at exhaling. Each breath was deliberately timed; I could tell that it was taking a lot out of him to keep the rhythm slow and steady.

I asked, "Blaine, how concerned should I be?"

Blaine said, "It's… don't." He rubbed his temples in frustration, forced in a grating breath, and managed to say, "I'm not dying or anything."

"But you're really hurting." I said.

He nodded. "I just have this feeling… like I could be in trouble if I don't get some help."

My heart panged for him; he started coughing, and it sounded much worse than his coughs had sounded all day. His lungs were so tight that the coughs whistled and halted in his chest. I was suddenly very aware of how easy it was for me to breathe.

"You're so calm," I commented.

He shook his head. Between barking, scraping coughs, he murmured, "I hate this more than anything… Like I'm drowning… Fucking awful… but I'm not scared… I just need meds."

The RV skidded a little as I rounded another corner too quickly.

"Finn, slow down," Blaine said, "You're going to kill us."

He closed his eyes.

"Are you dizzy?"

He nodded. "Yeah." But he forced his eyes open again to reassure me. I was starting to feel panicky.

I said, "Okay, I think that's the hospital there. I hope there'll be space to park this thing." I turned into the emergency approach and drove forward uncertainly.

"Right there," Blaine said, pointing to an empty lot across from the emergency room doors, "And seriously. It's not a big deal. I just need a nebulizer."

I nodded, flustered, and parked the RV.

"Do you want me to wake Kurt?"

Blaine shook his head. "He'll only worry. I can go in myself. You try to get some sleep."

"Are you kidding me?" I asked, "Someone's got to be with you. Let's go. Can you walk?"

Blaine nodded and got to his feet, but he was unsteady. I fought the urge to embarrass him by trying to help. I left a note for Kurt and Rachel, and he grabbed his wallet and his inhaler off of our kitchen counter. He carefully climbed out of the RV.

I walked awkwardly beside him as he slowly progressed to the emergency room doors.

There was a line painted on the floor directing patients to stand and wait until the triage nurse could evaluate them, but I crossed it and leaned through the little window, calling, "We need some help here!"

A grumpy looking man in green scrubs appeared and raised an eyebrow. "What can I do for you?"

I pulled Blaine forward and said, "He can't breathe. Do something."

The man's eyes flicked onto Blaine, who grimaced apologetically and explained, "It's asthma."

"Okay." The man pointed to the door to the left, "Come on back."

We went through the door and followed him into a triage area, where a female nurse in purple scrubs took over. "What're we here for today?" she asked.

"Asthma," Blaine whispered. He was starting to look very pale, and I wished that they would let him sit down.

The nurse nodded. "How long have you been short of breath?"

Blaine said, "A couple of hours."

I told her, "He's been coughing all day."

"Okay. Have you used an inhaler? A nebulizer?"

Blaine nodded and handed her his inhaler. "I don't have… a nebulizer," he said. His shoulder were starting to hunch up with the strain to pull air into his chest.

"Alright," the nurse said, "Sit down here. I'm going to take your vitals. Do you have any allergies to medications?"

Blaine sat down and shook his head. The nurse put an oxygen monitor on his finger and handed him a small plastic tube, which he immediately knew to bring to his mouth and blow into. She took it back from him and checked its reading.

"What's it at?" Blaine asked.

The nurse said, "One fifty."

"Is that bad?" I asked.

She said, "That's terrible."

My heartbeat increased as I began to realize that this might really be serious. But the nurse didn't offer any reassurance or do anything to make him more comfortable.

Blaine closed his eyes, and she took his temperature, his pulse, and his blood pressure. I couldn't understand why she wasn't doing anything to help him breathe. His wheezing had already gotten much worse than it'd been in the RV. I'd only ever heard such laboured breathing from dying characters on TV before.

She wrote everything down. Then we followed another nurse to another room, where Blaine was asked a hundred more questions that he barely had the air to answer. They got him to change into a hospital gown, and they left him sitting on a bed connected to the oxygen monitor, surrounded by other patients.

The steady, deliberate pace of Blaine's breathing was starting to disappear. He was losing control of it. "Why aren't they giving you medicine or something?" I asked, alarmed by how unconcerned anyone seemed to be.

"I don't know," whispered Blaine. I was surprised by how thin he was; under his hospital gown, his tiny frame was trembling. I suddenly really wished that I'd woken up Kurt. He should have been here, not me. Blaine's skin was starting to look blue.

Finally, an exhausted looking young doctor with a slightly frantic look in her eyes appeared, barely glancing at Finn or I over the chart she held in her hands. She listened to Blaine's lungs with her stethoscope and said, "Ouch, that's a nasty wheeze." She glanced at his oxygen monitor and swore. "Nobody's given you oxygen yet?"

He shook his head, and she swore again. "Your stats are tanked."

From there people finally started helping him. They strapped some kind of mask over his face, gave him an injection of something, and connected him to an IV of something else.

Somehow all of that just made the whole situation more frightening. When they decided he wasn't improving and they'd need to hospitalize him, I knew it was time to find Kurt.


	29. He Doesn't Deserve This

**Chapter Twenty-Nine: He Doesn't Deserve This**

"Blaine, I'm going to go wake up Kurt, okay?"

His exhausted, frightened eyes met mine and he nodded. He'd just gotten settled in a hospital room and was trembling on the bed while strapped to a mask pumping medication and oxygen into his lungs as an IV dripped steroids into his blood.

"Do you want me to get Rachel too?"

He shook his head pleadingly, and I understood. "I'll be right back, okay? You'll be okay?"

He nodded, and I left quickly.

I went quietly to the RV and gently shook Kurt awake. "Kurt? Kurt, wake up."

He mumbled something incoherent and rolled over, reaching instinctively for the empty space on the bed where Blaine should have been.

He sat up in confusion when he realized Blaine wasn't there; Blaine never got up before Kurt.

Kurt looked at his watch; it was three in the morning. I whispered, "Kurt?"

He tilted his head and looked up at me blearily.

"Try not to wake up Rachel," I whispered, "But you've got to come with me. We're at the hospital. Blaine's been admitted."

The sleep left Kurt's face immediately; he went pale and scrambled quickly out of bed. "What's wrong? What's going on?"

He scrambled to pull on some clothes and shoes as I said quietly, "He's having an asthma attack. It's really bad."

He pulled me out of the RV and hissed furiously, "Where is he? Why didn't you wake me sooner?"

I lead him quickly back into the hospital. "He made it seem like he only wanted to come here as a precaution. He didn't want to wake you."

Kurt made a frustrated noise and said, "Of course he didn't."

I nodded, "Yeah. And it wasn't until we were in the emergency room that I realized he was seriously underplaying how sick he was, but then it got really scary and I didn't want to leave his side to go get you."

We got into the elevator to go up to the floor where they'd put Blaine, and Kurt looked so scared that I wanted to give him a hug. "He's going to be okay," I reassured him, "He's getting the meds he needs now."

Kurt shook his head. "I can't believe he didn't wake me up. I should have been there. He must be so scared."

I nodded. "I know. I'm sorry. I just wasn't thinking."

"It's not your fault," Kurt said, "He always does that. Tries to deal with everything by himself and involve as few people as possible in his problems."

The elevator let us out on the right floor, and I asked Kurt, "Has this happened before?"

Kurt didn't seem to hear me at first; his eyes were wild and faraway as I led him through the labyrinth of halls towards the ward where Blaine was. Then after a prolonged pause, he said, "No. Well, I mean, I knew he was asthmatic."

"Of course," I said, "But has he been hospitalized for it?"

Kurt was too anxious to see Blaine to respond.

We arrived at Blaine's room, and the looks on both Kurt and Blaine's faces were enough to let me know I should probably let them be alone together. I walked down the hall to a vending machine to get a Coke and then sat in a deserted waiting area and took out my phone to read YouTube comments as a distraction.

"Finn Hudson?"

An unfamiliar voice said my name, and I looked up in surprise to see a teenage girl standing by the vending machine and looking at me with a look of shock on her face.

"Uh…" I hesitated. "Yeah?"

She grinned and stepped tentatively closer to me. "Wow. I'm a big fan."

"Oh." I don't know what I'd expected, but something in me relaxed. "Thank you!"

I nodded to indicate that it was okay for her to come closer, and I stood up to shake her hand.

Looking deeply concerned, she asked, "What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"

I said, "Yeah. Um. Yeah, I think so. I'm here for a friend. He had a bad asthma attack."

"Oh no," she said, "Blaine? I saw his tweet earlier about the smoke from the forest fires trying to kill him."

I smiled warily; it was always so strange to me when complete strangers knew things about my life, including the names of my friends. "Yeah," I said, "Blaine. It was pretty scary."

"Oh I'm so sorry!" she said, "That's awful. And in an unfamiliar city and all that…"

I nodded, and we both sat down. "I'm Celia," she told me, "My brother was in a car accident a few hours ago."

My heart thudded a little. "Is he okay?"

She nodded. "Yeah. A few broken bones and a concussion, but they say he'll be okay. I'm only still here because our parents are out of town and he doesn't want to stay here alone."

"Understandably," I said.

She nodded again. "Is Blaine going to be okay?"

I shrugged. "He should be. Kurt's with him right now. I'm giving them their space."

She nodded. "Oh." Then her face changed subtly, and she said, "Oh! So they're… together?"

I blushed suddenly. "Ah. Right. Shit."

She looked suddenly mortified. "Oh, oh never mind. I know nothing."

I laughed. "It's not a big deal. They're not in the closet or anything. They're actually engaged. They just prefer to keep their private life private, so if you wouldn't mind keeping it to yourself…?"

She said, "Of course. I understand."

"To be honest," I admitted, "We all find it kind of amusing to keep everyone guessing about which of us are sleeping together."

Celia laughed. "I know you do. You're always teasing us with it. I've been trying to figure it out for weeks. There are only three beds in that RV!"

I grinned. "Sorry. It's pretty funny."

She smiled. "This is crazy. It's so bizarre to really meet you. I've been watching you since you were in Mexico."

"Oh wow," I said, "So almost the beginning."

"Yeah. I have tickets to _Soundtrack_ on Friday. And I'll definitely be at your meetup tomorrow."

I nodded, heart sinking suddenly. "Right."

Her face fell a little, and she asked, "Do you think you're going to have to cancel? Because of Blaine?"

I grimaced. "I have no idea."

Celia and I talked for almost an hour until Kurt came out of Blaine's room and walked toward us. His eyes were red and puffy; he'd clearly been crying, and he looked even more exhausted than I felt. "Blaine's sleeping," he said tiredly.

I nodded, sliding over so that Kurt could sit next to me. "How's he doing?"

Kurt hesitated, looking questioningly at Celia. She got to her feet immediately. "I should get back to my brother. It was great meeting you, Finn. I'll keep Blaine in my prayers. Get some sleep!"

She hurried away, and Kurt raised an eyebrow. I explained, "She watches my vlogs. How's Blaine?"

Kurt rubbed his eyes tiredly and said, "Improving a little. The nurse said they'll keep giving him nebulizer treatments every few hours. There's this meter thing they keep having him blow into to measure his breathing, and they won't let him leave until it reaches the right number and stays there for a few hours."

"Any idea how long that'll be?"

He shrugged. "Could be a day or two. I really don't know. Blaine's not saying much; he's pretty upset and pretty exhausted."

"He seemed really freaked out before I went to get you."

Rubbing his eyes tiredly, Kurt explained, "I think he was pretty disorientated from the meds and the oxygen deprivation. He got confused, and it doesn't help that hospitals bring back some pretty scary stuff for him."

I nodded, heart sinking as I realized why that must be. "Poor guy. And how are you? It must be scary for you too."

Kurt's eyes filled with tears and his shoulders sagged a little. "Really scary," he agreed, staring at his knees. "It's not fair that he has to go through this again."

"So this _has_ happened before?"

Kurt shrugged. "Not for years, but yeah. He used to be allergic to everything, you know. He says he outgrew most of it by the time I met him, but he's told me some horror stories from his childhood. Blaine grew up in a body that would literally try to kill him if he ate the wrong thing or breathed the wrong air."

This intrigued me; I couldn't imagine a child Blaine. I thought of his reaction to Rachel's incense in Minneapolis, and I said, "Well, he's still pretty allergic to stuff, isn't he?"

Kurt nodded. "Yeah, but not nearly to the extent he once was. He had to be homeschooled until he was a freshman in high school because he was so sick all of the time."

"Wow," I said, "I had no idea."

Kurt said, "I'm sure that's a big part of why he's such a private person now. He was never allowed to spend time with other kids his age. His only sibling is seventeen years older than he is. His main companion for most of his life was his piano."

I said, "He's very private, yes, but he's very socially intelligent. Very charismatic. Good with people. I wouldn't expect that from a home-schooled kid."

Rolling his eyes, Kurt said, "Yes, well. Blaine's good at everything. Charm is no exception. He had to learn that so he could distract people from finding out too much about who he really was."

I found it mildly amusing to hear Kurt describe his fiancé like that, but I was too tired and worried to laugh. I asked, "But it's been a long time since he's been hospitalized?"

Kurt shrugged. "He had an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts last winter that sent him to the emergency room."

"But for asthma?"

Kurt said, "The only time he's gone to a hospital for asthma since we've been dating was right after he moved to New York and he came down with bronchitis. In the last few years, his asthma has almost disappeared. It's not fair that it chooses now to resurface. He doesn't deserve this. I'm sure he feels humiliated."

"Well he shouldn't be. God knows we were all coughing today with all that smoke in the air. It's not his fault."

Kurt brushed a tear off of his cheek, and I felt a bit uncomfortable; I hadn't realized he was crying. Kurt said, "Yeah, but you have to remember that there's nothing Blaine hates more than to be seen as weak, or to have to ask for help. He spent his childhood entirely at the mercy of drugs and doctors and the sterile bubble of the house he was confined to. He spent most of his adolescence standing up against homophobia only to be knocked down time and time again. And he's spent so much of his early adulthood helpless against PTSD and everyone's perception of him as a victim."

He paused, grimacing, and said, "And when I say it like that, it makes it sound like he should be broken and he deserves pity, but he's not, and he doesn't. And it's incredibly important to him that people know that. He feels the constant need to prove his own resilience and strength. He works meticulously to ensure that he never has to depend on anyone; that his own confidence and competence and optimism are all he needs as fuel for his life. So of course being hospitalized is going to humiliate him."

The lights in the hospital waiting room buzzed, and I rubbed my eyes. "Kurt, relax. Blaine's going to be okay. Physically and emotionally. And it's not true that he refuses to depend on anyone; he wouldn't need to marry you if that were true."

Kurt finally smiled and said, "Aw. Well, he and I are essentially one and the same at this point. It's different."

I didn't respond. He admitted, "I'm just scared, Finn. I hate hospitals. _He _hates hospitals. And I hate seeing him hurting. I hate all of this."

"Of course you do. But you know he's going to be okay. He knew when to ask for help, and he got the help he needed."

He nodded. "Do you remember…" his voice cracked, and he began again, "Do you remember the last time you went with Blaine to a hospital?"

I gulped, and my blood suddenly seemed to stop moving. I'd been remembering that day too, but I hadn't expected him to bring it up. "Of course," I said, "Of course I do. How could I ever forget?"

He met my eyes and asked, "What was it like?"

I shook my head, feeling nauseated. "Kurt, don't. I don't want to think about that day."

"He almost died, though. And you were with him. You saved his life."

I said, "He collapsed in front of me and I called for help. That's hardly saving his life, Kurt. Look, he got shot in the shoulder and lost a lot of blood. For a while we didn't know if he'd pull through, but he did. What else is there to say?"

My tone was a little bit frantic and emotional and it made me feel guilty, but I couldn't help it.

Kurt averted his eyes. "Sorry," he said, "Never mind. I shouldn't have asked."

I put my arm around my step-brother and said, "Let's get some sleep, Kurt. Blaine's going to be fine."


	30. Cherish Everything, Alright?

**Chapter Thirty: Cherish Everything, Alright?**

None of us got much sleep that night. I tossed and turned on the couch in the RV, unable to get my concern for Blaine out of my head.

Around six in the morning, I was startled out of my half-hearted slumber by Rachel, who shook me awake asked, "What the hell is going on, Finn?"

I blinked up at her, and she shook her iPhone in my face. "I've got about fifty tweets from people asking if Blaine's okay. What the fuck happened? Why wouldn't Blaine be okay?"

I sat up, startled. "What? What are people saying online?"

She said, "We're parked at a hospital, Finn. What the hell is going on?"

"Oh Jesus." I said, looking Rachel in the eye. She was on the verge of tears, looking at me with wild, scared eyes. "He's fine, Rachel. It's okay."

"What _happened?" _She asked me again.

I explained to her what had happened the night before, and she went very pale, tears spilling down her cheek. She brushed them off quickly, and said, "Oh my _God_. That must have been so scary, Finn! He really couldn't breathe?"

I nodded. "Well, when he first asked me to take him to the emergency room, I could hear him wheezing, which is always disconcerting, but he wasn't really struggling yet. He just said it was going to get bad if he didn't get help. I sort of thought he was overreacting. But by the time he finally got attention from a doctor… I can't describe how scary it was. For a few moments before they gave him oxygen, I was pretty sure he was going to lose consciousness."

Rachel shook her head in disbelief. "I wonder how he knew he had to get to a hospital? He refused to go after he practically keeled over coming offstage last night."

I shrugged "He said he had a feeling he was going to be in trouble. And he was right. I guess he knows the warning signs."

"Poor guy. He hates being sick more than anyone I know. First food poisoning two days ago, and now this?"

I said, "Yeah, it sucks." I picked up my phone. "But you said people online know about this?"

She said, "I had a ton of tweets asking me how he was. It freaked me out. That's why I'm crying. My heart just started pounding when I read them."

I scrolled through my own Twitter account, reading my replies. Tons of people seemed to have heard that Blaine was in the hospital, but nobody seemed to know why.

"Oh fuck," I said, "Someone's started a rumor that the tour's cancelled. I'm going to have to do some serious damage control."

Rachel shook her head and pulled me in for a kiss. She said, "Finn, you had a tough night. You don't have to work right now. Let's go in and see how Blaine is doing. Get some breakfast. The Internet can wait."

I nodded and put my phone resolutely in my pocket. "Right. Let's do that."

I put on some clean clothes and she brushed her hair. I asked, "Did you know that Blaine was home-schooled until high school?"

She said, "Homeschooled? Blaine? _What?_"

I said, "Kurt told me he had such bad allergies and asthma when he was a kid that he couldn't go to school. You didn't know?"

Rachel set down her hair brush, looking taken aback. "No! I had no idea. Fuck. I've lived with him for four years, and I never knew. Damn. Did his parents tutor him?"

I shrugged. "I assume so. I don't know. It's surprising, isn't it? Must have been a lonely way to grow up."

We both put our shoes on, and she said, "Every time I think I finally know everything about Blaine, I find out something new. I knew that he has allergy problems, but I didn't know it was that bad."

I said, "Me either. He really scared me. I saw a whole new side of Blaine Anderson last night. His whole uber-confident demeanor just disappeared."

She said, "I think I know that side. I saw a flash of it right after the show last night, when he wasn't breathing. Most of the time he's so self-possessed and confident. He's in complete control of his whole world. But sometimes he loses that control."

I nodded. "Yeah, and it's like a completely different whole new person appears."

Rachel nodded too. "A few years ago… you know… he had a really hard time with PTSD. He was having a lot of anxiety and insomnia and stuff; he was such a mess, Finn. I got to know that other side of Blaine pretty well during that time."

I nodded. We climbed out of the RV and I led her into the hospital. I asked, "And which side of Blaine do you think is the real side?"

Rachel said, "Both. Neither. I don't know. Blaine is just Blaine. He's an enigma. I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out other people; I can barely figure myself out."

I envied that in her; I felt like all I'd done in the last month was try to figure out other people.

We got up to Blaine's hospital room, where Kurt sleeping cat-like in the chair next to Blaine's bed. Blaine was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. He had an IV in his arm and an oxygen monitor on his finger and he looked like he hadn't slept in weeks.

When he saw Rachel and I walk in, he sat up a little and immediately started coughing—sharp, barking coughs between short, wheezy gasps of breath.

"Aw, sweetie!" Rachel hurried to his side and gave him a hug through his coughs. "That sounds terrible! I'm so sorry this happened. How're you feeling?"

Kurt stirred and lifted his head as Blaine returned Rachel's hug and managed to croak, "A lot better," through the coughing that didn't seem to want to stop.

Kurt got up and helped Blaine sit up straight, kissing him on the forehead and meeting his eyes in some kind of silent exchange that made Blaine smile slightly. The coughing stopped.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," said Blaine with a sheepish, apologetic smile, "At least my lungs have enough power in them to _let_ me cough now."

His usual confident tone had returned to his voice, and despite how sick I knew he really was, it comforted me. The determined sparkle that made him Blaine was back.

Kurt rubbed Blaine's shoulders, and Rachel asked, "Can we bring you anything? Do you know how long you'll be here? How bad was it? Should we cancel tomorrow's show? Were you really scared?"

I put my hand on Rachel's shoulder to get her to stop talking, and Blaine chuckled a little, which triggered his painful coughs again.

Kurt said, "He's been getting breathing treatments every few hours and he's improving, but he can't be released until he improves a lot more. I wouldn't cancel the show yet; wait until tomorrow morning. He could be out by this afternoon."

Blaine nodded his agreement, still coughing. Kurt kept rubbing his shoulders, and I tried not to worry. I shifted uncomfortably and said, "Blaine, I don't know how it happened, but somehow our fans online found out that you've been hospitalized."

Rachel chimed in, "Twitter is exploding with rumors. They're freaking out; they think you're dying and that the tour is cancelled."

"_What?_" Kurt reached for his phone, and Blaine started coughing harder.

I asked, "What do you want me to tell people? Or do you want to handle it yourself?"

Blaine closed his eyes and reached a trembling hand up to smooth out his disheveled hair. We waited for him to stop coughing, and he said, "I'll tweet something. Maybe we should all tweet something. You can talk about it on your vlog if you want. Just be honest. That's what the vlogs are for, right? Being honest?"

He was remarkably calm about the whole thing, which I had to admire. Knowing what I knew about Blaine's personal pride, I knew it must have been exhausting for him to maintain that unyielding confidence and optimism while lying in a hospital bed in Boise, Idaho.

I nodded uncertainly. "Do you want me to get some footage of you in the hospital to prove that you're okay?"

He started coughing again and couldn't respond. Kurt, who was already scouring Twitter reading all of the concerned Tweets, said, "Maybe just wait until he's had another breathing treatment. He's due for one any minute now."

I nodded. "Fair enough. Do you want us to go get you guys some breakfast?"

Kurt said, "Yes please. And coffee. Right Blaine?"

He nodded vehemently.

"Are you allowed to drink coffee?" Rachel asked, raising an eyebrow.

Kurt said sharply, "He requires coffee. Just get it."

A nurse came into the room, and Rachel and I left. We went down to the cafeteria, and I said, "We should both tweet something and then spend a few minutes replying to tweets. We've got to get the rumors under control. I just wish I knew how they got started."

She nodded, taking my hand in hers. "Of course," she said quietly, smiling strangely up at me, "Of course."

We both got ourselves some coffee and bagels. We found a quiet table in the corner of the cafeteria and sat quietly scrolling through our phones while we ate.

I tweeted, "Blaine's in the hospital getting treatment for acute asthma, but he's recovering quickly! Send your love. Xox. Watch for the vlog for more details!"

I replied to a bunch of people, reassuring them that I'd be at that afternoon's meetup, that we didn't know yet if the show the next day would be cancelled, and that we'd be back on the road as soon as we could.

"Aw," said Rachel, "People are so sweet. They're so concerned."

I nodded, "There's a lot of love and support out there."

She said, "But now they're already fighting amongst each other; half of them are asking for more details about what happened, and the other half are telling them to mind their own business."

I grinned. "Typical. I should get a vlog up, I guess."

Rachel said, "Can I help you film something about Blaine?"

I nodded, and she slid her chair right next to mine. I put my camera on the table and adjusted it so both of us would be in frame, and I started recording.

I said, "Hi guys. Before I give you all of yesterday's footage, I thought we'd just give you a quick update to let you know what's going on. So we're filming this today—Thursday, but everything after this will be Wednesday's clips."

Rachel nodded. I said, "I know that there were a lot of rumors going around the Internet last night, so I want to clear things up. If you've been watching the news in America the last few days, you probably know that there are huge forest fires in the mountains southeast of Salt Lake City."

Rachel added, "It's pretty scary; the highways are closed and tons of people are being evacuated. The whole state of Utah is shrouded in a thick fog of smoke."

"Yeah," I agreed, "Anyway, of course, we were in Salt Lake City yesterday. If you follow Blaine on Twitter you might have seen him Tweet last night that his performance in _Soundtrack _might not be up to his usual standard because of the smoke affecting his asthma. Well, if you were at the show you know he did a great job, but unfortunately it caught up to him later. I took him to the emergency room around midnight. He's been admitted to the hospital in Boise."

I paused, glancing at Rachel to see what she had to add. She explained, "We're all pretty shaken up, but Blaine's going to be just fine. I don't want any of you to worry. If anyone can tough it out through a thing like this, it's Blaine. He's a trooper."

I nodded my agreement. I said, "We're hoping he'll be recovered by tomorrow and ready to proceed with our shows as scheduled, but at this point we're not going to make any promises. Obviously we have to put his health first."

Rachel said, "Blaine's always had a hard time with smoke and pollution and stuff like that, but I'm sure that the pace we've been pushing ourselves at for weeks has a lot to do with it too. So if we have to slow down a bit, it's only because we need to have the strength to give this show all of the energy it deserves."

"Well said," I agreed. "So don't panic; follow us on Twitter for updates on what's going on. I will be at the Boise meetup this afternoon, but I'm not sure who will be with me. We'll announce in the morning if the Boise show is a go or not."

Pausing I said, "So before I put in all of yesterday's footage, I just want to say; it is really scary to watch a friend go through an acute attack like what Blaine went through last night. I can't imagine what it must be like to have your own body turn on you like that. I'm shaking just thinking about it." I held up my hand, which hadn't stopped trembling all night.

I said, "Blaine is one of the most resilient and collected people I know. Watching him struggle just to breathe really freaked me out. How can something that should be so easy for everyone be so difficult for a guy who is usually so good at everything? It really reminds you not to take anything for granted and to enjoy every breath you get to take. So I just want to remind all of you of that too. Cherish everything, alright? And when unexpected and scary things happen, search for ways of taking strength and inspiration away from those experiences. Most importantly, get out there and live, okay? Live your life before it's too late."

I turned off the camera, and Rachel wiped tears from her eyes and threw her arms around me, completely throwing me off guard with her sobs.


	31. Not Falling Back in Love

**Chapter Thirty-Two: Not Falling Back in Love**

When Rachel and I went up to give Kurt and Blaine their breakfast and coffee, Blaine was on the phone with my mom, reassuring someone that he was okay and promising them that he'd keep them updated. When I realized that it was my own mother that he was talking to, I got freaked out and decided to go find a campsite for the RV.

"I'll come with you," Rachel said when I announced what I was doing.

She and I left quickly, and once we got back to the RV, she asked, "What's wrong? You got all weird all of a sudden."

I shrugged again and looked up from my phone to see her looking at me with earnest, searching eyes. I was still getting used to be being around people who knew and cared about me enough to perceive my moods like that. I snapped, "I don't know."

She didn't recoil at all. She said, "Finn, talk to me. Why are you so moody all of a sudden?"

I didn't know. "It's just really hard sometimes to be here. When I hear Blaine talking to my mom like that… I dunno. It just weirds me out."

Rachel put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Blaine's like family to your mom and Burt. You must know that."

"I guess so," I said.

"It doesn't change how much your mom loves you."

"Of course I know that," I said.

"So what? What's so hard about 'here'? Idaho?"

I shook my head. "I don't mean Idaho. I mean _here_, with you guys. I feel like I've lived this whole different life in this whole different world, and now I'm trying to fit back into my old world, except that that world doesn't exist anymore, and there's no real place for me in the world that took its place. And I don't really know if I want to be here anyway."

Rachel said, "You were always part of our world, Finn. And you always will."

"Sure. But when I realize how much the relationships and lives I used to be a part of have evolved in the time I've been gone, I just feel overwhelmed by the amount of work it would take for me to ever catch up and really belong here again. I still have a hard time thinking of Kurt as my brother, and now it seems like in the eyes of my mom and Burt, Blaine's as good as my brother too. I can't deal with that."

"You're overreacting," Rachel said, holding my hand in hers, "It doesn't have to be scary. You just go at your own pace and choose for yourself who or what Blaine is to you."

I shrugged. "I dunno. I don't even know why it bothers me. Sometimes I think I'm way too fixated on Blaine freaking Anderson. I'm always watching him and wondering about him. It's so hard for me to figure out who he is let alone what our relationship is. And I have no idea why it's so important to me. Why should it matter so much?" I felt my cheeks burning a little with embarrassment as I spoke.

She said slowly, "I think I know why. I mean, Finn, you rode with him in the ambulance and watched the paramedics and doctors go to extreme measures to save his life. You were sitting by his hospital bed praying he'd live through the hour while you had to call half the people you knew to tell them how many people were dead."

I swallowed, gripping her hand more tightly.

She added, "He's got to hold an integral part in all of the memories you have of the day that drove you out of Lima for good. You told me that first night in New York that you'd been haunted by how broken he was at the funeral for years. That's probably why you fixate on him. He's more than just a guy to you. He's a symbol of a thing that changed the course of your entire life. And of course it freaks you out to realize how close he is to your mother. Your mother was all yours for a lot of years."

I let go of her hand and kissed her. "When did you get so smart?" I whispered.

She kissed me back. "Do you think I'm right?" she asked.

"I don't think you're wrong."

Rachel said, "There are quite a few of us who feel a lot of protectiveness and affection for Blaine Anderson. His fight for life after he got shot was what kept hope in all of our hearts when they could have been filled with despair. And he's an easy guy to fixate on. His talent and his charm _demand_ attention. Plus he's enough of an eccentric to keep everyone guessing. At some point though, you've got to let it go and realize that Blaine's just a guy who doesn't need his past to follow him around. He's just Blaine. And he's going to be your step-brother-in-law, so you're going to have to get used to it."

I nodded. I actually felt my mind rearranging itself as it acknowledged what Rachel was saying and adjusted to follow her advice. "You're so smart now," I said, "Do you know that? I could never have gotten such thoughtful advice from you back in the day."

She shook her head. "Never. Time and circumstances have changed us all, Finn. I hope that soon you can stop comparing us all to the people we were then. Because I know that I'm not falling _back_ in love with the guy I loved in high school. I'm falling in love with _you_-the guy you are now-for the first time."

She pushed her hair behind her shoulder and kissed me again, and I nodded. "I don't think I'd have it in my to love the old Rachel," I whispered, "But I think I'm starting to love _you_."


End file.
